As one year draws to an end, in the days between Christmas and New Year, many of us declare their intention to accomplish something worthy in the coming 12 months.

Resolutions tend to be specific, targeted, measurable, self-improving, silly, serious, realistic or unlikely to be accomplished. Some of us want to lose weight, get fitter, stop smoking, drink less alcohol, run a marathon, get a new job, spend more time with their family, and so on.

I thought about my own resolution for 2020 and could not come up with anything so specific as the list I mentioned above.  After all, I am underweight, don’t smoke or drink alcohol, running a marathon is an impossibility for the time being, I am spending 24/7 with my wife and seeing my children on more regular basis than I had done for a long time.

This makes me appear like I have attained perfection; far from it!  I have so much to fix in my life that perfection is unlikely to feature anytime soon.  Still, I have to come up with a resolution that is meaningful, challenging and likely to improve me as a person.

I considered the following options and found them lacking the element of being under my total control thus, giving me the excuse of saying: I tried but someone / something stopped me from doing it or did not help me.  I considered getting fitter, returning to normal or pre-August 2018, going back to market, traveling, doing voluntary work in the community, or mentoring young talent on pro bono basis.  All of these ideas are good, but they lacked the necessary conviction to see them through.

Finally, I came up with something which I feel I can commit to and represent a level of challenge.  Also, it is a little out of character for me but, you have got to try new things in life.

My resolution is to ‘give and forgive’.  Strange how these two words seem to belong to each other, but they are never considered or mentioned together like ‘forgive and forget’ or ‘onwards and upwards’, ‘chalk and cheese’, etc.  Anyway, I digress again so, back to my resolution.

I have a deep desire to ‘give’; not necessarily just material things.  As I get older, I find receiving less and less enjoyable and giving more and more satisfying.  Giving attention to others, listening more and talking less, loving and caring, and imparting knowledge to others who ask for it, and remembering the forgotten.  While I am on the subject, 2020 is a leap year so, please remember that nature has given you an extra day which we add to the end of the month of February, making it 29 instead of 28 days.  Why don’t you use that day, or any other day in the year to dedicate to a good cause?  I hope to be able to do something like this myself.

To ‘forgive’ is just as important as giving but it is harder to do because you have to set aside feelings of hurt or sense of injustice.  As long as you don’t burden yourself with the effort of trying to forget at the same time.  Forgetting is not within your power to execute (how can you wipe out a memory?) but, forgiving is.  I cannot say that I have too many things to forgive others for.  Nor can I say there is a long line of people who did me wrong in the past.  I am mainly talking about future events; I do not want to bear a grudge towards others who might offend, hurt or get in my way in 2020 and beyond.

With that, I wish you all a happy, prosperous and a perfect vision for 2020.

Mufid