Call Me Placido

Even though I’ve stopped making New Year’s resolutions a long time ago, I’ve decided to teach myself to “go placidly amid the noise and the haste” of relationships this year.

If I’m rejected, busted or unrequited (yet again), I will not let it affect me too much. But with matters of the heart, one can never tell; if it cannot be avoided, then I will not let wallow for longer than a week. It took God seven days to create the world and rest; why not match Him in making my world placid once again?

As far as possible, without surrender, I will be on good terms with all persons. But I will avoid those people who rejected, busted or kept my feelings unrequited; they are vexations to my spirit. So even if they are the ones who’ll reach out to me in friendship, I will be friendly to them but will not be friends with them, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than them.

I am a child of the universe; therefore, I might as well send my love to the universe instead of tiny individuals who do not deserve my time, attention and obsession.

And I will be placid even if I remain single while every one else around me is coupling or breaking up. I will be gentle with myself, with the ones positively lost in the giddy early days of romance, and with those who are going through excruciating heartbreak. Whether it is clear to me or not why I remain single, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

With all the breaking up, infidelity and broken dreams, being single is beautiful. So I will be cheerful. And I will strive to be happy.

(with much apologies to Max Ehrmann’s “Desiderata”)