Monday, 30 December 2013

“It's a new day, it's a new dawn...and I'm feelin' goooood.”

Hola and Bonjour and seasons greetings. Tomorrow is the first of January and it has got me thinking about the new year ahead of me and inevitably, evaluating the one that has just past me by.
So, I've never been much of a 'resolutions' girl. To be honest, I'd rather eat chocolate cake, continue drinking wine and exercise less.


My theory is that resolutions are not merely pressurizing; they also do the opposite to make you feel good. Every year on the 31st of December, I see that token friend eating 'her last square of Cadburys' or that dude who drinks 'his last pint' (oh wait, no, boys don't give up beer) and then a week later...

Yeah, that happens.


So what's the point, I say? I don't make them if I know I'm not going to keep them.
However.
Three months of living on my year abroad has already changed my perspective on some things.
Because that time has been (let's face it) a difficult three months, there have been a lot of inadvertent character-building experiences. Through these character building moments, I have learnt the discipline of:
  1. waiting

    The internet modem which nearly took an arm, a leg, 1/4 of a year and quite a few other things to make an appearance in my life.
  2. persevering at something


  3. dealing with unruly characters


  4. finding my feet (and at times, identity) in a foreign language


And it seems to me that this has all cumulatively resulted in a change of attitude towards some things I once was relaxed about.

For example: I never made resolutions before because I was never convinced that I had the willpower to keep them, and therefore making them in the first place was pointless.
But now I think about that, I reflect on what terrible logic that actually is. For starters, it makes you believe something negative about yourself – that you can't do something. (And to be frank, I don't need any extra negativity in my life, especially since the French appear to season their bureaucratic notions with sprinklings of it).

And secondly, I think that the past three months has proved to me that I'm not just capable of doing something: I'm also capable of coming through the negative, blue, frustrating, disappointing, sad and downright down moments that sometimes come my way and turn them positive.


Because so far my memories of living in Paris, although coloured by the difficult moments, are memories that remind me of achievement.

If quitting and leaving had been as easy as breaking a New Year's resolution just to eat chocolate cake, then I would have left Paris months ago. But because that was never a choice, there wasn't much to be done about it.

But now that I have achieved in my independence, it puts a whole new light on what resolutions actually mean. When you're resolved to do something, it means that you put up a fight.
It means that you get on with your resolve, even if it's extremely difficult.
It also means that giving up should never even be an option because true resolve should mean the same as “I don't have a choice”.

Okay, so it's never going to be easy to “give up chocolate cake” or “go to the gym more”. But maybe the problem with resolutions is not that the resoluee (is that a word?) is incapable; maybe it's that the resolution itself was always unrealistic.

I'm not going to say my resolutions because once you've said them aloud, that's when they lose their significance. But the point is for the first time in years, I have made resolutions – and I know that I'm capable of keeping them.



At the end of the day, resolutions aren't all that important. It's what they represent, isn't it?

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