What are Resolutions?

“What are resolutions?” This question would occupy good amount of my time and would involve a good part of my brain when I was a kid. I didn’t seem to understand the term and would end up ruminating about it. I remember the year I stepped into my first grade at school. It was the start of the year 1993 and I was, I don’t know maybe 5 years old maybe 6. Its been long, you see. The morning of 1st of January that year back in 1993 will always remain fresh in my memories.

I had overheard my friend Anu (short for Anushka) telling me and a couple other friends that she was asked by her mother to make a Resolution for the new year. She was supposed to promise herself to do something and make sure that she does it by the end of that year. I vaguely remember her telling us that her mother made her promise that she will study hard and try and achieve good marks every term.

I recollect that on having heard what Anu was supposed to do as been made to promise by her mother, I felt terrifically dreadful if my mother or father were going to make me promise the same to them. Not that I was weak in studies or that I just managed to pass my exams but to me it felt like a plus of hours in study-time and a minus of hours in play-time.

When I reached home, I was waiting for my parents to ask me ‘beta, aap naye saal mein achhe se padhke achhe-achhe marks laoge na??” (Darling, you would study well and get good marks in the new year, right??) But that never happened! So, I walked up to my father and narrated the events from the morning to him. Explaining how Anu had to promise her mother to get good marks in the exams. And I was astonished at what my father explained to me later.

My father said, “Beta, resolutions are a way to know what you wish to do and an aim toward achieving them. It is a goal, a wish from your heart. If I assign a resolution for you that would be a task from me for you to accomplish. More like an obligation. Whereas a resolution is a goal you promise yourself, not to me or your mother or your friends or anyone for that matter but yourself. And once you have made a resolution, it is your duty, thereby to see how you achieve it. But always remember to stick by it. You might achieve it in a year, or a few months or just a few days. It will bring you immense happiness and fill you with a hope for good.“

I was greatly relieved and happy at the prospect of promising to do something all by myself unlike Anu’s mother. It simply felt as though she was laid with a burden and made to drag herself through it through the year. Poor Anu! But isn’t that what most parents do (though in a good way)?

“While it is not wrong to force kids to do things, but to route your intentions by enforcing it on them is cruel“, my father concluded. If only all parents perceived things that way! As years rolled by, I made it a point to make a resolution every year. The only difference being I made Birthday Resolutions and not New Year Resolutions. It somehow made more sense to me and I felt extremely good to share it with my father.

New Year Resolutions are famous and followed by almost everyone. Almost all of us seem to make a resolution at the start of the year and try and stick by it through the course of the year. So while I make my birthday resolutions and till day still share it with my father, he was surprised to learn about my birthday resolution for this year.

Recently, I have found that I write infrequently and scantily. My blog is unattended for days together. Often, I have so many things crammed in my head that I push writing for later resultant of which I do not write at all. So many ideas and thoughts keep twisting and turning in my head and keep beckoning me to put them down on paper. But all I do is convince them to attend to them later. Not that they are most happy about it. Gradually, I realized that they started shutting themselves out of mind and I was left with only professional or personal issues that took full charge of my mind. Which, let me confess, started to get me frustrated. The creative side of me was getting dull. And around the corner was my birthday.

So dear friend, here is my Birthday Resolution for this year!  Now, that I have started to write blogs but remain absent from the blog-classroom often,  I made a resolution to write a blog everyday, each day till the next year (which for me falls on my birthday). Though late, I realized that I cannot make do without writing and to let my thoughts drift to nothingness. That is the side of me that keeps my day cheerful. The thought of Writing.

Maybe just  few lines if not lengthy paragraphs. Maybe a just a picture that caught my attention. But I will write everyday. ‘Something is better than Nothing‘, isn’t it?

-Asha Seth