Hi guys. It’s a bit into the New Year, 17 days to be exact and as always I find myself thinking. I seem to do that a lot these days. Maybe it’s the spare time, or maybe it’s the change of outlook on life. What I’ve realised is that the more you are engulfed in the system, the more your thoughts get lost in it. You start thinking about how to get better at your job as opposed to how to better yourself. You start caring about what the others in that system think about you, as opposed to what you think about yourself.
Before I move on though, I want to say sorry for the gap between my last super-political article and this one. It was Holiday Time. Time for family, friends, food, booze, adventure, sleep and some work of course. I’m now well fed, rested, refreshed and back on track. Thanks for reading my rants throughout last year and I hope that I can convince you to read them throughout this one too.
So, moving into the New Year, a bit intoxicated on Old Year’s Night, at a corner bar in Colihaut, we counted down. And while the numbers reversed from our lips, I started thinking of New Year Resolutions. A bit cliché, I admit, but one does not simply enter a New Year with zero resolutions. Here are some things I’ve decided to change, or improve or eliminate from my life this New Year; whether they are people, habits, routines or beliefs. Let me know if I’m on the same track with you or if I’m on the right track at all.
- Stop Caring about things that don’t affect me:
I’ve come to realise that I am an artist. The basis of that function is emotion. Therefore emotions guide my being and decision making process. However, being emotionally invested in everything tends to turn out bad most of the times. In the past, I’ve cared so much about friends. How they feel, how their life is going, how to be involved, my community, family, their shortcomings, my students, their parents, their upbringing, where they’ll end up. Those taken advantage of by the government. Bladi bladi blah! Then, I realised “I am NOT responsible! They don’t even care about themselves, so why should I?”
Don’t take me for a selfish person. I’m far from that. I just think it’s time to care about me. You see, all those emotions wasted on others only ended in disappointment at least 75% of the time. People will be who they are. You can’t blame yourself for their failures, decisions, bad habits, successes, achievements etc. At some point in life (earlier better than later) we must all come to the understanding that we are all individuals. That means only we exist within our minds and bodies. (Or if you’re me about 7 people exist within your mind… possibly 8.)
This year, I make the decision to stop caring about all these things that don’t affect me. Why? Simple. Because they DON’T affect me. Putting all you’re energy into them is senseless. I vow to put ALL my energy into the things that affect me. Whatever they are. Some may include a few friends/family. But I won’t be all up in their lives. Just the parts that affect me. I’ve begun already, but this year I’m taking it all the way. #nostress #no regrets.
- Take advantage of time
Dear father Time,
No longer shall I ignore your warnings. No longer shall I party with procrastination while you sit at home trying to get my work done. It’s gonna be hard, but I make a vow, to give you the attention you deserve. To use you for our benefit.
Yours Sincerely,
Nicki
Nuff said! This year, I’ll have a lot of time on my hands and what I do with it will determine who I am next year. So, I decided to make a year plan. A practical one. It consists of 3 major projects and allowance for all the small ones in between. I continue the battle with procrastination and hope that at the end of 2015, I will have emerged as victor.
- Learn Dominica
This one I must do. Dominica has given so much to me and it’s a shame that I yet to know her. The people, I learned a bit about after the general election and my conclusions sadden me. I still tend to believe that there is hope still cause I’m stupid like that. Maybe there is hope in those like me who do not fear men and worship capital. I pray that the numbers of us will grow and we will rise one day in defence of a land which has given birth to us, or welcomed us as her own. (Sigh) Hopefully we are not outnumbered by the others.
This year, I will ignore the people who do not know Dominica. Those who live in society’s mental isolation and choose not to know what The Boiling Lake looks like; those who have never seen beneath the ocean and who have never breathed real air. Those whose minds have been so easily corrupted by a valueless piece of paper and empty promises made by man. I choose to ignore these fools and get to know Dominica, for who she really is.
I plan to travel my land. There is so much to see, and I can’t believe we are not looking. I plan to look. I plan to discover, I plan to experience, I plan to learn all that is Waitukubili. And from that I plan to create and hopefully, through my creation will come influence and change, motivation and self-balance. Here I come Dominica, brace yourself.
- Forget Church
I’ve forgotten church. But I will never forget God. My Mom doesn’t understand, and I don’t expect her to. But like I said in number 1, I’ve stopped doing things for others, time to do me. I understand that we all need some sort of divine truth or concept of life and what we should believe in. I guess it’s because as a species we seek intellectual reach. We don’t function on instinct like other species but on insight. So I understand the God thing. That I get. Something must have created us, and given how this life seems to function, it must have created us for a reason. Only thing is, it doesn’t communicate directly with us. It doesn’t tell us “hey, your purpose is ______” We don’t know what it looks like. There is no proof it exists. But we feel its existence. We feel that our creator is somewhere in the universe and here’s the thing – I don’t think it needs money.
First of all, it didn’t create money, we did. So I don’t get why Churches need all that money to tell you how and when to worship the thing that created you for free. I don’t get that some guys met the Son of God, who was white and born of a virgin and wrote a book about it (which still happens to be the world’s best seller and makes big money for another group of guys who live lavishly and also happen to be men with no proof of the thing that created us yet are telling us that they intercede between that thing and us. If you ask me, sounds like a bed-time story)
No offence to those who are Christians, Budhist, Rastafari, Satanists, Beyonce-ists, Muslim etc… Believe what you want. And I’ll do the same. See in church, people hate each other. Some of the people who go to church religiously, hate their neighbour, hell they hate their family. They try to bring down others. They take bribes from the government and though they talk about God, money comes before God to them, whether they know it or not.
So I’ll take my chances, pray to my God, believe that he exists somewhere in some form, be a good person, balance my spirit and forget about the hypocritical, contradictory, non-evidence, solely-opinionated teaching that is church. Sorry.
- Love
What is a life without love. Without someone or some people to share the experiences and time with. I vow to stop shying away from love like mass media has poisoned us to. I vow not to give in to the promiscuous, drug induced life that the young have been fooled into believing is best and to open my being to accept love.
I vow to choose heart over mind this year and open up those barricades. Whether it be from a partner, friends, family, nature, my dogs. I vow to be open to love this year.
Never be scared of love. For once you succumb to it as long as it’s genuine it can be one of the best highs you’ll ever experience in this low life. This year, I vow to love, no strings attached and see where that leads me.
Hakunamatata!
Nicki
Your resolutions are yours and yours only like you said you’ve stopped concerning yourself with the things that don’t affect you, so no one else should be concerned about your issues :).
I do have some advice or comments… you should post a new picture with every new article, you should also structure your article for example we all have differing interests; so if this article is about you then maybe it should be all about you, if the article is about how much you like zaboka then talks about how good zaboka is in a salad, and the last time you had zaboka, how zaboka would be a great export and could help the economy, the health benefits of zaboka, how much one zaboka cost from a street vendor, the history of zaboka and how it makes the skin so beautiful, which restaurants in DA serve zaboka, the varieties of zaboka you’ve had in your travels or heard of etc. That article encompasses economics, history, health, hobbies, cuisine, travel etc… catch my drift?
coincidentally there is a shortage of zaboka in the US due to drought in California and cartels taking over farms in Mexico.
Give us a more DECENT picture please!
Nics no hard feelings but people who make new years resolution , like to hear themselves talk lol.
My dear sister Nikki,
It’s always a pleasure to read your column. So inspiring, so refreshing. I do understand the part about “Forget Church.” I’ve stopped going for a long time now because I’ve realised that this was instituted by man, to further control the minds of the masses. First of all, those who colonised, enslaved and oppressed our foreparents, gave them that concept of God (who is white) and they passed that down to the generations.
Before our foreparents were enslaved, they didn’t worship the Western God or jesus but they reverenced the creation. They had their spiritual beliefs in place but it was not the worship of a white man in the sky who will return to rapture us. This is all myth, allegory and like you said, “a bedtime story.”
The church has been instituted to further enslave our minds and to cause us to forget our spirituality.
What we need to do is to research our history as an African people and redeem our minds from these slave-oriented religions…
There is a lot of literature that can help restore us as a people and to eradicate that God-concept from our minds. When man created his religion, he also created the concept of God. If we think about it, their is this god-concept in every culture, called by a different name. Where did this originate? In the minds of men.
We a a part of creation and the universe and without creation or the universe we would all die.
Anyone can visit You Tube and read the works of our black scholars like Dr. Yosef Ben Yochannan, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, Chancellor Williams, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, Carter G. Wilson, Dr. Eric Williams etc., Also listen to a Jamaican brother, Mutabaruka.
ONE LOVE
Nicki get ready for the judgemental, hypocritical backlash. Dominicans do not like to be challenged intellectually. DNO recently published an article in which lawyers being accepted to the bar were told that belief in God was essential to practicing the law. God forgive the atheist that have to stand before those lawyers. You should be free to love whom ever you feel like living. GOD granted us freedom of choice.
Nikki you are breath of fresh air. Wish more Dominicans pondered the depth of your examination of what ails us. As for the church on island, it may well have compromised itself by too deep an involvement in party politics. I believe in the separation of church and state.
Nicki, your resolutions sound great. The forget church part : a church body might be in need of your intelligence to make it an experience people would not be inclined to “Forget about”. True, people mess up and discourage others from directing favorable consideration towards them, but we cannot resolve to ignore their issues, because being “a better person” in the new year would be hard to achieve. We all need to seek ways to handle difficult matters.
Oh! what a jelly nut can do to human if you use it wisely. Praise the Lord. Love is Patient,kind,it does not envy,it does not boast,it is not proud,it is not rude,it is not self-seeking,it is not easily angered,it keeps no record of wrongs.Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. Love always protects,always trusts,always hopes and always perseveres.good luck in love
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! Questionable???????????????????????