Resolution: Be wary of that stranger in your inbox!

It’s that time of year again and you’ve spent about two weeks thinking up the best protocol for that big moment on New Year’s eve -- it could be a fine party, a bar-spree or watching a crystal ball drop; in essence, they all achieve the same thing: pretend that the 31st of December is somehow different from the other 364 days and a fifth. The universal laws of physics and astronomy and sociology shake your deep-rooted belief, however, because the sun still rises and sets (I don’t see it from my corner of the world but everybody swears it’s out there somewhere) and people still say hello and comment on the weather (New York city dares to be a little different because there it is more like hello followed by a ribbing in the stomach or running you over). All said, just another typical day.

However, there’s one thing that promises to be different, no matter what:

You open your email New Year’s day and find a deluge of messages from people whose names you barely remember, some that were on your “ignore” list, but miraculously got back in, thanks to the efficiency that is yahoo and others that don’t particularly care whether you have a great moment or hour, let alone, a whole year. So, while you are still just getting over your annoyance at the clearly meaningless names in the sender’s list, frowning at one that sounds very much like the guy back in college who’s most sociable skill was an ominous stare, it promises to get worse. You open all the emails simply because you have to. Also, following the hype and hoopla of the night before, New Year’s day itself is pretty laidback and you’re not sure what you would rather do. Plus, protocol dictates that you do something newyeary. What better than opening New Year messages? So, you open each email and find out that ALL of them read the same:

Dear All,

Wish you & your family & friends a very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year 2006 !!

I should grant them this: they all get the year right. So, it’s not something as hollow as copy-pasting last year’s message or sending a pre-designed draft, mind you. But I am thinking yahoo and every other mail service should let go of the “send to all on your address book” feature, cos preceding the two-line message that I now have indelibly stored in my long-term memory from having seen it year after year and message after message, is an endless list of people totally irrelevant to me and my life (I admit, just a tad more than the sender himself). The more tech-savvy ones have learnt to do the bcc thing, which doesn’t really help, because the “all” speaks volumes, and you’re left wondering how many million fortunate beneficiaries you are part of.

And that gets my over-active mind pondering over how much of the well-wishing I could realistically get. I mean, this person wants not just me and my family and friends (which accounts for about 20 people off the top of my head and 100 if I sat and counted), but the whole wide world and its family and friends to have a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. Now, I don’t know about you, but I think that’s asking for too much. I am sure nature and destiny and god will agree with me when I say there is something wrong with that line of thinking and that much well-wishing. You can’t wish for too much in life. I would say it’s mighty benevolent if you just wished for something good for yourself, your immediate family, your best friends, picked one favorite cousin, your uncle’s adorable dog and the salesgirl at the supermarket that is always nice to you.

So, I wouldn’t dig out email-info for every person I have ever known, snatch that post-it slip floating around from yester years, pore over the address book from an era when it was still fashionable, put names in alphabetical and chronological order, re-align an approved list of festive words to form a coherent new year message and spend five precious minutes of new year’s eve sending out an email. The people I care about get the message – either through a personal email, text, phone call or without me ever having to say it and knowing in their hearts that I could wish nothing but goodness for them. And while I’m at it, I don’t really need a day called New Year’s and have a crystal ball drop to say it to them. That day I need to go drink in a bar and get wasted and watch circling lights and wonder if they are indeed oblong and pretend that I enjoy doing that more than I would settling down on my recliner and watching a marathon of Friends :)

Oh, and before I forget, a Happy New year to ya’ll!