Highly Needed Resolutions for 2019

Happy 2019 to all those who have by now accepted that 2018 is over and done. For the first few weeks of every year, many of us keep signing the previous year with the current date.

Those of you who are still a in hangover, well we can help with a pleasant January jolt: our dear CJP is retiring the next week. Yes, he is indeed. He is no general that his ‘extension’ becomes an issue, and fodder for the talk shows.

If you too are one of those who declared our outgoing CJP the person of the year 2018, you can start your 2019 from next Friday, so that both 2018 and the person of 2018 are folded together.

In the beginning of every new year, our mind and diary are replete with new year’s resolutions. As the days in January pass by, many of these resolutions also slipoff our attention span.

The most popular types of NYRs relate to our being better, fitter, richer, happier, and less of a failure in the year ahead. The research shows that most people are able to succeed on the last resolution; the ones succeeding that are put on a repeat mode year after year.

In my brief history of making, failing and repeating NYRs in the last 25 years, I have seen I was able to achieve only those tasks which were someone else’s resolution to make me do them – someone holding coercive or charming sway over my decisions, choices, and excuses.

In the other areas, I have either shamelessly put a resolution (that did not work) on repeat, or very convincingly told myself that I failed because of others.

You too can try this template; it works perfect in Pakistan, India and USA. Some wrongly call it ’externalizing the blame’; but we know, it’sa great way of internalizing others’ faux pas.

Many people start making resolutions from mid December. It surely helps in forgetting failed resolutions of the preceding year. A majority of NYRs have a short shelf life. Over 70% are forgotten by the 3rd Monday of the new year.

Then comes a deluxe model of NYRs that are built on the needs, necessities, and compulsions of life’s drudgery - and often are made by others.

In this piece, we are helping some of the key Pakistani individuals to deliberate resolutions that at least keep breathing till the new financial year in July 2019.

CJP is the first. He only has a week to make work related resolutions, so no need to advise. But for his post retirement inning, he can resolve to bea suo motochampion of all Dams.

The incoming CJP can make two resolutions: how to clear the mess left by his predecessor/s, and how to leave less mess for his successor/s.

The PML-N leadership currently is like a triangle whose three lines are in rest mode and thus lying parallel to each other. So, it’s a potential triangle, not a functional triangle. Going forward, it may become a working square if two new lines are included in the troika, and one is replaced. If this narrative is too abstract for you, you stay happily where you are – in the PTI.

MNS-1, can make only one resolution. That though he did not play it well, and that too three times, he can end it well, and without a hope of playing it the fourth time.

MNS-2 can resolve that she can be less on screen, and more on street, when she is allowed to be on the street, that is. SS, for a change, can keep his NUR notebook free till April or July, as the case may, and make his NYRs once NAB is done with its resolutions about him.

AAZ can make two resolutions, that he will right a book – a tell alltale like Reham Khan but of course political and about incidents and institutions, not individuals. His second resolution can be that he would not surreptitiously write resolutions in BBZ’s note book. For BBZ, the first tip is to read his resolutions carefully to see if these are actually his or someone put them in there!

COAS can make one resolution – which we can call the mother of all resolutions - that he would let the Kashmir resolution happen. ISPR can start some much needed social work, and lend expert hand to PM’s resolve of providing housing to the poor. ISPR can start with affordable housing for the poor generals; the two star, and the honest and professional type three stars.

We are not suggesting the PM to have any more resolutions because, one, he already has his plate full; and too, a year is a small and insignificant reference in the real he operates in.

Very happy 2019 to you all. May you relax, reflect and enjoy watching others’ fail in their NYRs.