Truly, resolutions are simply promises we make to ourselves so we may feel better about the transgressions that we have committed in the past. Last year, I found myself making the same resolutions I did three years ago.
Not only was I sacrilegiously absolving myself of my sins, but I was committing them over and over again like a crazed serial killer.
Resolutions are made with good intentions. However, as a soldier living in the zeroes, we are sensible enough to admit to ourselves that good intentions are simply not enough. So for this year I just look at how I’ve survived the past years. After all, happiness can simply be that irritating little bugger under your nose.
In my short and rather eventful life I’ve come to realize one thing: Even belligerent derelicts like me (and you if you are self-effacing enough) can be happy.
No 12-step program here. No detoxing or yoga or colonics involved. Just take advantage of the time you find yourself stuck in traffic on EDSA again and take these three little pills.
1) Know the deal
We all know that paranoia has always been the chicest accessory for the modern socialite. I mean, everyone from Zelda Fitzgerald to Howard Hughes to Peter Sellers had it, so why shouldn’t a genius like you not have it, too?
I’ll be quick to note that paranoia can quickly morph into delusion, which is rather scary and damaging to our following exercise.
Knowing what the deal is is seeing yourself in the harsh fluorescent glare of how others see you and where your place truly is in this riddle.
Similar to what W.E.B Du Bois would call double consciousness: It’s how you see yourself and how others see you. Note: This is not about pleasing others but rather trying to see how annoying you truly are. How you cut the cake is entirely up to you.
Paranoia can help you be overly self-aware, thus you can really cure it by being self-deprecating. Laugh at yourself and you’ll see others will stop laughing at you.
A few years back, I was extremely paranoid in a vapid sort of way. I felt that people were laughing at me behind my back and throwing these fake geometric smiles as I passed and they were mocking my poor outfits as I strode away. I thought I was going nuts. All these celebrity problems without the celebrity status– it wasn’t fair. Soon after, I asked my boyfriend if I was imagining things. True enough, he told me that people did make fun of me. I loved him for telling me so – it meant I wasn’t going nuts in that Zelda kinda way, a fate worse that being the town voodoo doll.
I realized people laughed at me maybe because I was laughable. Scandale, silly, careless – sometimes caught in reciting some sort of inebriated haiku to a bewildered audience. If Madonna survived reinventing herself, I would survive, too, doing just that.
Age can be a friend, each day that I get older a day in some watering hole drops. I’m down to just two now. In two years I’ll be just like one of those smug been-there, done-that kind of folks who tell their hung-over friends that they just don’t go out anymore and annoyingly ask what the "in" places are. I don’t know if I’m looking forward to that, but the slice in my Roman exercises has definitely made me feel lots better.
I know you’re asking what’s my point? Well, knowing what the deal is helps you see what you have to change in your life. Sometimes you need someone to tell you that. Sometimes you just have to take note of your Anna Nicole Smith ways.
2) Having a short memory
I’m friends with my ex-boyfriends. Whether the breakup was amicable or if he pulled a sly one on me – it does not matter. And when I say friends, its not just "Hi!" friends but as in real hangout buddies. Sometimes, me and all of my ex-boyfriends (including present boyfriend) all go out to dinner and I bump into some friends who are just not shy in expressing how mystified they are by this orgy.
Truthfully, a month after the breakup I hardly remember anything anymore. I don’t mean this in a cocky manner. I honestly just don’t remember anything vivid about our romantic past. It becomes this whole Jackson Pollock kind of experience where all is abstract and splattered.
You know the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? It’s something like that – except that I still remember their names of, course.
It holds true with holding grudges. I always seem to surrender. It’s so tiring. I mean, it’s fun to throw dagger looks at your loathed one for, like, the first week or two, but it gets old and awkward after that. I don’t mind being cheap, it makes going to the bathroom easier. If you think Manila is small, just imagine the bathroom at M Cafe. Every nemesis imaginable is applying their lip gloss there. So what’s a pursed smile and a terse hello? Nothing much, but at least you get to use the bathroom.
3)Lower your expectations
In high school, you we’re only cool if you hung out with cool people and kissed cool boys. Well, were not in high school anymore and most of the cool people in school are now in rehab and the cool boys are mostly unemployed.
My mom was talking about a spinster friend of hers who, despite her 40B’s was single. My mom said that she dated all the fightest guys (more on eligible bachelors next week) and yet her days as chief spring chicken has gone without the ring of success (or simply a ring for that matter). She said that she just felt no one was good enough for her. She always saw little nicks on perfectly good guys and maybe was secretly waiting for Prince William to marry her (I prefer Prince Harry actually, PW looks so boring).
As early as now we have to shed the princess complex. That feeling that the world owes you just because you’re fabulous (according to who is also a very important thing to consider). No job is low enough, no situation dire enough for you to wave the white flag. In terms of men, I’ve learned it’s always the hidden jewels who will make you the happiest. Not the guy everyone is undressing with their eyes in Nuvo.
So there, three simple things to think about in traffic as the new year kicks in. In terms of being happy, think being cheap, not Prozac.