The fallacy of New Year resolutions

By Moses Ndung’u 

Kenya is a beautiful country full of goodies and cookies. It is a New Year and the New Year resolutions have found their way deep down into every person’s annual plans. Well for a good start and sense of direction, one has to create a good list that spells out what one is set to do. The Country’s forefathers, the Kenyan premiers who literary fought for the fruits of democracy that Kenyans now enjoy, had set the short term and also long term resolutions for our country.

Kenya after attaining independence and real democracy was left still under that morbid realm of colonialism that later translated into neo-colonialism. The Country’s forefathers had to get some means to sustain what they had toiled for and getting real means to stand firm for the dictates of real freedom.

Financing the establishment of a real democratic government was a real problem and a danger to Kenyan independence. ‘An act of good will’ by the international financial institutions that dates back to that ancient era still holds Kenya by the collar. Fifty years after independence Kenya has to pay the debt that has matured after a grace period of fifty years.

Resolutions are an easy task to make, aren’t they? But making them real is a really good nuisance. It is like moving into a new house with the cockroaches with you. Roaches in this instance symbolize our past inadequacies.

Now in the new house thinking that all the roaches are gone, you wake up in the wee hour of the morning only to find out that it’s a grave mistake. You get a rude shock to find mother roach, father roach and their zillion offspring in a morbid glee over a few crumbs of a sandwich. Fine, now you understand that for New Year resolutions to work out the way you intended during those few moments when you meant what you were writing those resolutions, then it has to begin with yourself.

Getting out of oneself is quite a very difficult endeavour, getting out of ourselves as Kenyans is akin to impossibility. Shedding the filthy evils that have gnawed at the dear dignity of Kenya has to be on the frontline. Corruption, egotistic resources distribution, tribalism, nepotism, greed for money… on and on. Somebody said, better the devil you know than a strange angel’’, its true but for a change to occur we have to come out of our cocoons and look how new options will augur with the new us.

Our human credibility could be at stake if our resolutions will just be long forgotten phenomena that will have added a punch into our stagnating in our present mire.