The eve of each passing year, many people make promises popularly called ‘new year resolution.’ How many people actually keep them? It is a yearly ritual observed at the eve of every dying year. At churches, at drinking joints, inside disco halls, on the streets, everywhere, people take stock of the outgoing year and spot something they had done wrong or something they had not done well and, without anybody prodding them, submit themselves to censorship. Thus, you hear people say: “this coming year, I won’t smoke again” and so on and so forth.
The yearly ritual is called ‘new year Resolution.’ What does it mean? Do people actually keep to their new year resolutions? Is it not just an exercise in self-deceit if only because the resolution never lasts even the first month of the New Year? Is there any point in making promises that one cannot fulfill? What does it mean in these days of uncertainties? Days when you can never plan for tomorrow?
Many people spoken to on the issue are indifferent about it all. Though some claim they still do it, others however, say they do not even know the difference between a new year and an old one. Mr. Francis Abere, an accountant with First Bank Plc, says, it’s all a waste of time and self-delusion. “He asks: “what do I gain by it? After all, it is your old bad habits that you resolve not to go back to. In that case, I have few to bother my head about.”
Tunde Alabere, a secretary with D.G. Adelakun and Co.’, a law firming Ebute Metta, Lagos, supports Abere “what is the use in these days of economic and political mess around? “He ponders. “Personally, what I do at the beginning of each year is to pray to God to give me the power and courage to face the wish to have my own and raise a family. But I don’t regard it as a New Year resolution.
“I don’t make new year resolution. What I have heard people make resolution on are their bad habits they wish to drop like smoking, drinking and other vices. As for me, I don’t engage in them”. As another year rolls in, it is obvious that across the land and clime, people will still embark on the yearly ritual of making resolution about what they are going to do and what they are not going to engage in this new year.
Sola Akande, a trader in electronics at Ojuelegba, Lagos says he is going to quit smoking this year by the special grace of God. I have tried to kick the habit more than twice, but I’m desperate to call it quit with it, it’s getting me uncomfortable these days. I don’t even mind the amount of money it consumes from me monthly, what is driving me mad is the nuisance I have become at home and among my friends who don’t smoke I was thoroughly embarrassed one day when I saw my four-year old boy picked a stub of cigarette on the floor and put it in his mouth as if he wanted to smoke. I felt ashamed. Luckily no one was around, I quickly snatched it from him and threw it out of the window, from that moment it had dawned on me that the time is up to bid the habit a farewell. So I’m quitting this habit as from December 31, 1998. I want to drop that nauseating smell of smoker.”
As Akande is praying for a fighting spirit against smoking, so also is James an automobile engineer at the mechanic village on Sagamu road Lagos, begging God to deliver him from the alluring power of alcohol.
According to the dark complexion engineer, alcohol has taken the better part of him. Ï want to stop drinking in this New Year, “he told our reporters. It has taken the better part of me. It has robbed me of the goodwill of my customer nobody wants to give his vehicle to incorrigible drunkard. I’m quitting”.
Just as the duo of Akande and James pledged to drop smoking and drinking respectively, Mrs. Felicia Omotola (real name) says her New Year resolution is to become faithful to her husband. “My new year resolution is to drive all men friends who I’ve been having affairs with. I know this is bad and I have confessed this to God and asked for forgiveness. In the New Year, even if taking joint is going to park up so be it. I do want to use my body to fill up pock I’m through with that habit. God bring customers who will not lust after my body before they patronize me.
At the eve of each passing year, many people make promises popularly called ‘new year resolution’. How many actually keep them? Is it that easy to kick a habit? That is what the New Year resolution tries to do, but as long as human beings continue it remain what they are-vulnerable mortals. There will be vices to be kicked and virtue to imbibe. The time to do either however may or may not necessarily be at the advancing of a new year.
ARTICLE FIRST PUBLISHED BY THE PUNCH NEWSPAPER
