So what does every New Year mean to me?

My friend Miguel shared the most curious story the other week. Some friends of his from Hong Kong went to visit the mainland and came across the most precious-looking Chow Chow. It was a catalogue-perfect version with its hair fluffier, its build more prominent – overall, stronger than the regular Chow.

"This must be the real deal and not just any pet-store floozy," his friends thought to themselves.

They brought the puppy home eagerly and things went well until one morning, something strange happened. The dog started walking on its hind legs. The dog they bought – the magnum Chow – turned out to be a bear!

This story reminded me of the time when I was a little girl and I would collect fish from a pond. I loved those guppies and fed them with care and put their bowl next to my bed. Until one morning they developed legs and started hopping like a Tim Burton nightmare around my room. The fish were tadpoles that had become trans-species (transsexual?) frogs!

These tales just remind me that we don’t always get what we seem to bargain for. We care for them and nurture them, until one day we realize they have become something else. Deception has always been more common than fair game, and yet every time it happens, be it the first or 20th time, I feel devirginized, raped and robbed of my innocence.

Whatever evil or cruel deceptions the world might have, I still feel the weight of responsibility on myself to be a better person. Not to be jaded by the puppy bears and tadpoles of the world. That’s why there are resolutions. Every year as the bell strikes the 12th hour, we are given a get-out-of-jail card that allows us to be better for the year to come. It’s a way to cope in a cruel world. To be one of the marbles of wisdom and truth to humanity, even if it just means ditching coffee and lessening the lying to white lies.

Resolutions are often broken the next day, if not the very day they were made. So pretty much you’re left with a new year with the same dysfunctional self. A coffee-stained existence, reeking of menthol lights and useless jabs to society. So, I’ve stopped making resolutions. It’s futile. It’s like dieting during the holiday season. Good for you if you do it, but you’re not quite as damned if you fail.

So what does every New Year mean to me? Aside from the nuisance of having to readjust to writing a new year in your checks when you’ve been acclimated to the year before, does everything about it have to be so damn dramatic ? There are many things I have done every year that I would have loved to undo. A misspent audience of friendship, cruel things that have rolled off my petulant tongue and actions I have made all in the name of insecurity. No resolution can undo that. And no matter how I try to make up for it by forgoing designer coffee and reading Tolstoy in favor of tabloids, I will never undo the mistakes I have made.

All I can do is repent. Learn from my mistakes and not play the internal blame game when I think about it. At the risk of sounding like a self-help sap who ought to be on a morning program, I’m loath to say that the road to happiness is found in admitting to your fears, and more often than not it is ourselves that we fear the most and not the world around us. The average person who may have a casual relationship with cash and reality may not be all that happy with themselves. I look at myself and see a person that I could perhaps tolerate if I were not me.

In the quest to be a better person even before the New Year rang in, I took it upon myself to turn back to a good habit I had jettisoned in favor of magazines that quench my ADD-flavored appetite. Not quite like Victoria Beckham, who has poshly admitted to never having read a single book in her entire life. I have not finished a book in perhaps a year and a half. Quite awful, considering I used to finish one every week when I was better. Anyway, the book I was reading hit the spot. It was by A.J. Jacobs called The Know-It-All. Like me, he feels like adulthood has dumbed him down. He used to be a brain-and-a-half and as adulthood reared its ugly and lazy head, he knew more about celebrity marriages than the state of the nation. To make up for lost brain cells, he bought the entire set of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and vowed to read each volume from cover to cover. His observations and comments are amusing (i.e., amethysts are actually used to guard against drunkenness, according to the ancients).

Although it’s been quite a challenge to stick to this amusing tome of information, I can’t help but find out about Nick and Jess and how they plan to split the millions. I have digressed as a human being. I actually liked myself better when I was 12, not quite a person yet, if you know what I mean, but I stuck to my guns and knew what was right.

The road to being an adult is never-ending. My mother is still finding her way. My father at the age of 73 is still realizing some things on his own. When we think we know everything, that’s when tragedy strikes. That’s when our souls and brains turn into floss.

So I guess it’s not just about new years and resolutions. It’s all about learning about the world around us and most importantly, ourselves. Forgiving ourselves for the mistakes we’ve made and likewise, those who have wronged us. Things that hurt us are only there for us to learn. And the things that make us happy are there to make us realize that there is just so much more to come.

And remember, don’t be too hard on yourself. Someone once said that the life you want to change is actually a life someone else wants to have.