Trailing Ellipsis

The year is coming to an end in typical Namibian style. It is hot, with the often unfulfilled promise of rain hanging in the air. The clouds build, but instead of falling, they crumble and break apart and head elsewhere like they have something better to do.

The capital city is emptying too, already traffic has been significantly reduced, there are not many queues in the businesses which remain open. Soon, even the newspapers will close for their December break. And then… what?

The Dezemba madness will be in full swing all over the country, no doubt. There will be parties, braais, socials, dinners, and any manner of occasions for loosening up from what seems to have been a universally challenging year. There will be sleep-ins, early bird jogging and late-night Netflix binge-watching too.

And then, of course, there will be resolutions, too.

Ah, those annual goals people make to guide them through the next year, a list of North Stars to keep them on the path, focused and driven towards particular goals.

New summer bodies, levels of fitness and improved health status; new jobs; new literature or revisiting old reads; more travelling, more experiences – the species of goals are innumerable, as are their articulations.

Not all resolutions are sounded out or written in the same way. To each their own, we are told.

Some of these resolutions will come to pass, and all power to those who will have the strength and the stamina to pursue them relentlessly throughout all temptations and distraction. Power to you and yours. Here’s looking at you, kid. (Please go easy on the status update button!)

And, as usual, some resolutions will be impossible. Either they will be unclear, poorly defined, and, therefore, the way to their achievement will be murky. Or they will be too grand where they should be simple, pursued in a piecemeal manner, step by step, bit by bit.

Some resolutions might lie by the wayside, forgotten because they were untrue or unnecessary, written down merely for the sake of having them, to fit in with the optimists and energy bunnies who whip themselves into madness when a new year is on the horizon.

This is all normal, by the way – not everything comes to pass in the way that we script it.

Some things do not come to pass at all; and this is, perhaps, the sourest lesson of all.

Things rarely go according to the plan.

The trick, methinks, is not to count them as disappointments, to write them off entirely, but to see them as trailing ellipsis for what comes next, whatever that may be.

Perhaps good, better or the best – and sometimes the opposite. All things are possible, after all.

But, damn, after a 2017 of fascist, racist and sexist headlines; inches, columns and full-page spreads, I am hoping 2018 offers something different.

For me and mine, and you and yours, I have but one resolution: Make it through.

This sh*t ain’t easy. No, sir.

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