Choose one goal and achieve it

You have not quit smoking and drinking (like you said you would); you have not started those yoga and pilates classes (like you said you would) and you have not started calling your parents at least once a week (like you promised you would). Luckily for you, you are not the only who is off to a slow start to the year. To make you feel even better, someone out there has some up with a reason/excuse/scientific research/poll to make it alright.

Quarter-life crisis. That is the newest phrase doing the rounds (as we are done with “moreki” and “ke Dezember boss”). If you find that you are in your mid-twenties and you are stuck in perpetual adolescent phase where you cannot move out of your folks’ place and generate an income to sustain yourself, it is easy: blame it on your quarter-life crisis.

Of course, it is not your fault that you squandered countless opportunities from friends and family to assist you in turning yourself into a reasonable human being. How about we go back to primary school when we were taught about fractions, and extended the offer to everyone? Young ones can have “eighth-life crisis”, as “mid-life crisis” is already taken, and just to be sure we have covered all our bases, we have a 1/1 fraction, also known as a “whole-life crisis”?

The problem with living in our times is that we make the obvious look and sound so confusing. It is a bit like the term “speed walking”. It used to be that people either walked or ran, but some researcher probably came up with a poll that six out of seven people feel better after they walk slightly too fast for it to be walking, but slightly too slow for it to be running. To all the people I see on the roads in the morning swaying their hips vigorously and refusing to lift their feet off the ground, please stop confusing us. Please make up your minds if you are walking or running!

What is so difficult about choosing one goal for this year, and, come hell or high water, achieving it? Clearly, that is an impossible task. It is easier for us to be somewhere in the middle where it is safe, just so that we can feel better about ourselves but also appease onlookers.

The great thing about all of this is that we are only in the second week of the year, so we have plenty of time to make up for last week’s blunders. Oh flip, just realised there is term for that too: procrastination.