My new year resolutions

Our perception could either be our path to nirvana or an invisible cage that bottles us up. Therefore, it deserves attention as much as the other important affairs. Unfortunately, one is often unconsciously surrounded by one’s own personal reality. Therefore, fixing our perception is never easy for it requires seeking where we are not much designed to seek.

Why am I speaking about perception—instead of my resolutions?

A while ago, I happened to know someone who would be mad on a new year’s day, and even on the day of his birthday! Fuck, I lost another year without getting anywhere, he would say. To hell with the resolutions, what difference does it make anyway?

But then, I knew many others who would use this occasion to refresh their positivity and alacrity about life—to realign their priorities in line with rapidly passing time; sometimes we all get dusty by a few mundane and tiring affairs—and merely need a gentle soul wash to see, and get deeply entangled with, the fervors of life again.

So here I am, trying to think, floating amidst the memories of the past, how I could get most of my life this year. In simple words, trying to think what I should invest my time in. But before jumping on it, let me scout out what matters to me the most. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes: relationships, knowledge, health, art, charity, work, climate change, and entertainment. In no specific order. This list is very different from the one last year, just like prior years. Perception is to be blamed. It, if given due attention, keeps changing.

Without getting into tiresome explanations, let me expand briefly on each.

Invest even more time in relationships:

Relationships are the flavors of life. Status of your relationships with your family, relatives, friends, and coworkers, determines a significant part of your inner composure.

Invest even more time in the pursuit of knowledge:

Availability of knowledge is only next to prevalence of stupidity in its overwhelming abundance. Spending substantial time on determining what to get into isn’t a bad idea. Planning ahead what to get into makes it easier to cut through the clutter.

Invest even more time in health:

A healthy body is a platform for flourishing a healthy mind. Given our work has been shifting from physical engagements to mental ones, physical well being requires extra efforts. Our ancestors, only a couple of generation ago, did not require a gym; because their life style consisted unending physical toil. But for us, exercising with a tight discipline is no longer optional.

Invest even more time in art:

We are all born artists. The nature generally doesn’t discriminate among newborns with respect to art. Yet most of us try very hard as we grow, without knowing, to stop being artists. The art wouldn’t complain if we leave her alone. Losing a touch with art, however, is losing a touch with our imagination. Engaging with art is engaging with beauty. Ignoring art is like leaving the most important corner of our mind in a cage for continuous decay.

I am going to allocate more time this year to reading, writing, playing music, and making animation. Sadly, I have been mostly out of touch with playing music for past ten years. That’s going to change this year. Who knows my next post carries a picture of once-lost calluses on my fingertips 🙂

Help the deprived/ underprivileged:

The underprivileged are byproduct of society’s material progress. The society must undertake a continuous course correction for unintended outcomes of development. A large responsibility lies on the shoulders of each individual in the society to help achieve this. The hapless souls need our personal time as much as they need money.

Invest even more time in talent and leadership development at work:

The complexity of day to day matters in Finance and Technology, the industries that I work for, has multiplied over years. Be the domain knowledge, the competition, the market pressures, the impacts of the new laws, etc, successfully mentoring and leading the experienced knowledge workers still remains one of the biggest challenges.

Help create awareness about climate change:

Global warming is the most devastating catastrophe that the mankind would face—unless drastic proactive measures are taken to combat it. While there is still a lot of debate on whether the threat is real, one has to be blind to not see it. The signs like unusual temperatures, shortening of fertile seasons, inconsistent rainfall, and unpredictability of weather in general are already increasingly visible. The melting of polar ice to the level of an apocalypse is not a far stretched possibility.

Invest even more time in entertainment:

This doesn’t require much elaboration. Toil hard on everything described above, and then unwind regularly.

Wish you all the best of everything this year, and beyond!

Pawan Mishra