Dear Auntyji
I have a wonderful husband who is smart, kind, and compassionate. I think he is the best companion for me and has given me 15 years of wonderful married life. Auntyji, the problem is this. Each year, in the last week of December, we sit down and decide what our new year’s resolutions should be. And generally, we both have resolutions – for example, we both want to lose weight or we want to read more or we want to help others more. And mostly, we meet all our new year resolutions, because we are fairly disciplined.  But at the end of 2023, when we sat down to come up with resolutions, Vivek said that he had no resolutions, and he was happy and content with the person he was. Auntyji, I was shocked – I mean, he is already pretty good, but surely there was something he could have aspired to be better at, don’t you think? When I questioned him further, he said he would support me in my resolutions, but he did not have a single resolution. He said that continuous improvement was his goal which meant he tried to improve every day, and that new year’s resolutions did not resonate with him anymore. Auntyji, is my husband a smug, narcissistic person who now feels that he is perfect in every way and so does not need to improve? Surely there must be certain things every human needs to work on, don’t you think?
Auntyji saysÂ
Ai hai hai – my little gulabo, my little nasamajh, did you even take a moment to think about this before you wrote to me? Did you stop to contemplate what your beautiful husband was attempting to do, before you decided to send me your useless little missive that tells me everything I need to know about a dull simpleton like you? Let me break it down for you. Your wonderful, self-aware, self-actualised disciplined husband came to the very rightful conclusion that new year resolutions are for the weak amongst us, and instead of waiting for an arbitrary date to make changes in his life, he was going to go full kaizen, (look it up if you must) and embrace continuous improvement wholeheartedly. So the problem here, my little titli, my nanhi si amroodh, is that you are the problem – because you have failed to recognise your genius of a husband. He does not need to change, you do. You could learn from him. You see, Vivek has decided that he is going to self-monitor and make changes every day to become a better person. You on the other hand, wait till the new year to decide to make a change. How a smart man like Vivek ended up with you is beyond me. But before Vivek decides that you are something he needs to improve upon and finds himself a better, upgraded model, I suggest you do a whole lot more reflection and start aspiring to be better every single day.