By Zile Singh 

The New Year 2021 is at hand.  All are awaiting its arrival with new hope and happiness.  It has brought with it the happy news of the Covid-19 vaccine.  A lot of expectations and jubilations are in the offing.  Let us hope that the New Year will take away the social distancing,   sadness and sufferings of the year 2020.  Many of us will make one Resolve or the other for the New Year.  The New Year Resolutions will vary depending upon the individual and his circumstances. The common deficiencies most of us are facing are indiscipline and procrastination in our day to day life.  All of us know what is beneficial to us but are not able to implement it. Our new year Resolutions fade away by the end of the first month of the year.  Come February, and we fade. Alas! What a tragedy with us – the human beings- the super creatures on earth.  God lives in all of us irrespective of our race and religion.  Yet we find ourselves armless in front of as small a habit as waking up on time and keeping a discipline in eating, positive attitude, recreation and exercise.  I call it DARE (Diet, Attitude, Recreation and Exercise).  I ask, “Can you dare?”  Before asking you, I am putting this question to myself also.  However, let us not miss the opportunity to enter into a New Year and take charge afresh.

The greatest test of a man’s character is how he takes charge of his own life.  Most of us are aware of this fact and are striving to improve ourselves in every aspect of our lives whether it is physical or mental.  Everybody wants to be physically fit and mentally alert.  Still, we are prone to idleness and lethargy.  We keep our minds involved in the same habit of worry, anger and procrastination.  We keep on living a life with the same old bad habits without any improvement until our last breath.  With regard to keeping my necessary files and documents in proper order, I am still in the same old habit of keeping these in a helter-skelter manner as I was maintaining these when I was young. Also, in the spur of a moment, I lose my temper on trivial matters.  Mainly it happens at home.   In this respect, an old Hindu proverb says, “There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man.  The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.”  Our New Year’s Resolutions are nothing but to improve upon our previous self. 

William Shakespeare in his play Hamlet wrote how Polonius advises his son Laertes, “This above all; to thine own self be true”.  It means,    look at your character.  Be honest, moderate and sincere with yourself.  In our daily life, we see that we are not true to ourselves.  Knowing fully well, we are in the habit of repeating the same mistakes again and again. We have forgotten that all a man achieves or fails to achieve is the direct result of his own doings.  In the New Year, no Resolution is as good as to believe in your own abilities and put them into practice before it is too late. To accomplish our aim we have already lost enough time.  The year 2021 is starting with  number One at its end.   Catch hold of it with confidence and climb the stairs of success one by one.  Through self-analysis, one will find that one is in no way inferior to those who have achieved success in any field of human activity, be it physical fitness, qualifying an examination,  or even writing your story, poem and  novel.  According to James Lane Allen, “In all human affairs, there are efforts and there are results and the strength of  the effort is the measure of the result.  Chance is not. Gifts, powers, material, intellectual and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort; they are thoughts completed, objects accomplished and visions realized.”  No New Year Resolution will be worthwhile until and unless one knows oneself.  Because to know others is clever and to know oneself is enlightened. No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.

Whatever our age, we all are students in life.  We should keep on learning.  To develop good habits like get organized, learn something new, exercise regularly, stop procrastinating, eat healthy food, enjoy the present moment, help others and reduce unproductive use of time, etc.  Many of us are habitual to excessive use of social media like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter.  By reducing some time from these we can spare time to find a sport in order to keep ourselves fit. Finally, you will never change your life until you change something you do daily.  The secret of your success depends on your daily routine. 

Zile Singh is a well respected Columnist, Writer and a Vipassana Meditater. He has a Post-Graduate Diploma in Human Rights.  He can be reached at zsnirwal@yahoo.ca