It’s almost the end of January.

With the celebrations behind us and almost all of us back at our daily jobs, the New Year seems to be slowly settling back to the ‘Business as Usual’.

Like the New Year, resolutions too have lost their sacred value.

Most of us have already broken resolutions multiple times with excuses like ‘Just this one time’, ‘It’s the weekend, or ‘I don’t give a F*** anymore’.

However, last week, I met someone who has kept all the New Year resolutions he has ever made. For privacy’s sake, let’s call him Mr. Resolution Keeper.

I met Mr. Resolution Keeper accidentally in a mall. Like me, he had come with his wife to buy a dress. We were both waiting outside the ladies’ trial room, to give our feedback on the dresses tried by our respective wives.

“Crap, not again,” Mr. Resolution Keeper shouted.

He was a bit loud. For a second, everyone around took their eyeballs away from their phones and stared at Mr. Resolution Keeper.

“What happened,” I asked.

“I checked Facebook again,” he said.

What’s so criminal about checking Facebook? This new age addiction makes our brains produce ‘Dopamine’. As we stroll through the never-ending feed of Facebook, the brain produces this feel-good chemical faster than the ‘Likes’ Ed Sheeran got for ‘Shape of You’ when it was first released.

“This is the second time I have broken the 15 minute cap,” he said. “This year, I had kept the resolution that I would only open social media for 15 minutes each day. Those 15 minutes were exhausted five hours back.”

Wow, nowadays these kinds of resolutions are more difficult to keep than ‘Quitting Smoking’

“Well, it’s ok. I guess resolutions are meant to be broken. Till now my resolutions have not survived more than two weeks into the New Year,” I said to make the guy feel better.

“Ho, that’s bad. You must persevere with your resolution. I have kept all the New Year resolutions in the past,” he said proudly.

Are you kidding me? You just broke the ‘open social media for 15 minutes each day’ resolution.

“Well let me explain myself,” Mr. Resolution Keeper said seeing my confused look. “Last year my resolution was to — Stop Swearing. Although I used the F-word more than 20 times last year, relatively my swearing had dramatically reduced compared to the previous years.”

He paused for a moment and then continued.

“Every year, I consistently fail a few times in keeping my resolutions during the year, but I never give up on them.”

In a world where being ‘Ok’ is considered good, I guess holding on to your New Year resolutions, despite a few breaches, is ‘Too Good’.

His wife came out of the dressing room. They had a similar nod of ‘this is it’ for the dress. My wife too came out at a similar time, but the nod was unilateral. I had to continue my wait outside the trial room.

Mr. Resolution Keeper and I parted ways. However, the small conversation I had with him, has given me a new way of looking at New Year Resolutions.

Resolutions are never about achieving perfection, it’s about making us a little better, each year.