TORN APART with BOYD PHIRI
EVERY year around this time most people come up with resolutions. What is it about December 31 that motivates dreams of self-reform among people?
Every December, people make resolutions meant to convert them into organised, addiction-free individuals with clean houses, healthy bodies, wholesome relationships, perfect children, and career paths rising to the top – the same vows they made last year and the year before.
Of course, it is a good idea to set yourself some goals for personal growth or indeed self-improvement.
It’s like applying for social security and hope that you would receive handouts all year round.
But whether people accomplish all their resolutions or not is another matter. Just like me, every year, no matter how hard I try, I break my resolutions at the next birthday anniversary.
When relatives buy me a birthday cake once I add another year to my chronological age, I start thinking that I should be eating cakes every day in place of brown bread, which I had planned to eat at the beginning of the year.
I have made a resolution before to reduce the intake of carbonated drinks but each time my mother-in-law offers me one, I break the resolution. I would like to use this as the basis for my second resolution – not to accept fizzy drinks from my mother-in-law.
You know, sometimes it feels impolite to refuse things from your mother-in-law, even when you have a genuine reason.
But this time around, one of my resolutions is not to break my resolutions. I will make sure I don’t break the resolution I have made not to break my resolutions.
You know, when you fail to accomplish your goals, you feel like you are living a life in arrears.
It’s like a landlord in the hood who has been planning to finish building a pit latrine for the last five years and keeps planning to finish building it every December.
Some people have made several attempts to modify their alcohol intake, but each time they go near a bar, they take not one bottle of beer for the road but 10.
I know one of my colleagues’ resolution is not to go near a bar, especially that he is getting married, just like his fiancee resolved to get married come next year.
The tricky part about this resolution is that you have to hope for a coincidence where you meet someone who also resolved to get married and have children.
If you don’t meet one, you run the risk of breaking your resolution on getting married.
There are so many things people want to accomplish next year, let’s say, becoming pregnant. But if one is not married, her resolution would be to find a partner first, so, on the list of one’s resolutions would be two items; (i) get married and (ii) become pregnant.
But most girls in the hood do not care, marriage or no marriage, they resolve to get pregnant first and make another resolution at the end of the year to find a life partner to take care of the child.
I also know that some men with concubines would be making resolutions not to tempt one another with mtototo, especially after reports that someone died in a guesthouse after taking an overdose of mtototo.
I bet sex-workers would also be making resolutions. If this year one managed to hook 150 men, she would be looking forward to securing 200 men on her business.
However, if you don’t end up accomplishing all, or any, of your resolutions, don’t be hard on yourself. There’s probably a good reason you didn’t change. For example, you did not come across someone who had resolved to get married, or you didn’t have a better alternative to beer drinking.
bjboydphiri@yahoo.com