The Best Is Yet To Be

The next article on our shortlist for this month’s writing theme, is Aparna Sanjay’s thoughtful and reflective write-up of her views on the Resolution Story. 

Aparna, in her own words: I am a corporate worker bee turned development professional who works with a non-profit in Delhi. I’m a travel enthusiast, a foodie, craft junkie and mom of 2 young kids. I blog about parenting, travel and kidisms.

The way I see it, there are two kinds of resolutions. The Doing kind and the Being kind. To elaborate – the doers, who (mostly) make the doing kind of resolutions, are (again, mostly, let’s not over-generalize here!) externally-focused people. They make resolutions about places to see, skills to learn, money to earn and things to do. They make bucket lists of all the stuff they need to do and the lucky (or should I say resolute) ones manage to slowly but surely tick items off their list. To exercise and lose 10 kgs, to see all the Seven Wonders of the world, to get a great appraisal, to hit 150% of their sales target and make it to Hawaii, to buy a house, to bungee-jump and skydive…….to squeeze the most out of life……to maximize their potential and experiences.

Now me, I make the Being kind of resolutions. Most of the time. These are the self-improvement type of promises we make to ourselves. Over the years, I’ve resolved to be more assertive, less impatient and short-tempered, a more involved parent, more disciplined, less paranoid. The list goes on and it feels like my entire life is a work-in-progress. There are no full stops, only commas and line breaks. To be the best I can be, not in relation to anyone else, but in competition with myself.

Resolutions are when I press the pause button, take a deep breath, step back and assess my life and where it’s going. Because life is always going somewhere isn’t it? What are resolutions but yet another way for us puny humans to control what is, in essence, un-controllable?

Most people who make resolutions don’t keep them. It doesn’t matter, I say. The very act of making a resolution says a lot about yourself and your priorities in life. Sometimes, thinking about what you really want can take even you (captain of your life!) by surprise. And some things don’t and can’t happen overnight. But thinking about them every day and really wanting to make them happen has the same effect as the action of dripping water on stone. It’s taken me 10 years of making the same resolution every year to become a more patient, introspective person. And it took several years from the time I first planned to go on that dream New Zealand vacation for it to happen last year!

So let’s resolve all we like, as often as we like. As one of my favourite poets Robert Browning so eloquently said, “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

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*Photo credit: zizzy0104

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