Hilary Fannin: Optimism breathes easier at this time of year

Happy new year, comrades. I trust you survived the festive season without choking on a turkey bone or gagging on a mouthful of bitter regret for having invited caustic Auntie Bertha to the Christmas table. I hope Santa left you something nice next to your sooty grate. I hope you binned your slimming knickers and your carbohydrate obsession. I hope you managed to have a nap while the giblets were simmering.

So here we are again, tiptoeing through the unmown pastures of another new year, trying not to waken old dreads.

I like this time of year; I like the sense of possibility. Stepping out on a crisp January morning is akin to opening a clean copybook and taking a sharpened pencil out of your mála. There is that feeling that this time around you’ll remember the full stops and capital letters. This time around you’ll imbue your sentences with mindful commas, the adjectives won’t piggyback the nouns and canter around the page like bold ponies on a blue-lined beach. This year, wimpled Sister Josephine, bowed under the cruel weight of doubt and disappointment, might open her heavily locked desk drawer and break out a golden star.

There’s hope yet

Optimism breathes easier at this time of year.

Never mind that the streets leading to your front door are littered with chickens come home to roost. They might be gathering around the weighing scales, clucking at the accumulated kilos, pecking at the ring around the bath, dining on the crumbled mince-pie crust decorating the wash box (how did that get there?).

They may even be counting the empties and ripping up your list of good intentions with their yellowing claws, beady eyes bulging like the straining buttons on your bell-bottoms. So what? It’s a brand new year and if we’ve learned anything at all, surely we’ve learned that life is too short for petty regrets.

But no, apparently not.

Recently some bright-eyed, bushy-tailed academic elf – somebody who had got all the ironing done, including the Christmas wrapping paper to be recycled for next year, and had already been to the bottle bank – set about researching the top 10 things in life people most regret.

Number one in the disappointment chart was “not seeing enough of the world”. Having come of age in an era when long haul meant dragging the coal bag around the back, and when Australia was about as accessible as Mars, I too feel the pain. But is it ever too late to say “one-way ticket, please”?

This was followed by “not having saved enough for retirement”. Saved it in what, sweetheart? A pension fund? Bank shares? A mildewed paddling pool?

Number three in the regrets chart was “choosing the wrong partner”. This is a tough one. But maybe this and “not seeing enough of the world” could be sorted out simultaneously by selling the silver, pawning the piano, sticking a lasagne in the freezer and skedaddling.

Sadly, number four was not having told parents how much they meant to you before they died. But maybe they knew anyway. Find an ocean and roar it into the wind. It’ll make you feel better.

The next three regrets were intertwined: choosing the wrong career, spending too many hours in the office and not seeing enough of the children. Those kinds of regrets are mean old ghosts who walk through our dreams, toothless old crones sitting on the ends of our beds when we wake. Don’t suppose there’s any chance of sticking the career in the freezer along with the lasagne, no?

At number eight, people regretted having spent too much of their precious time worrying about what other people thought. What a fantastically informative statistic.

Chewed fingernails

Let’s learn from other people’s chewed fingernails, and shag it. Just shag it. Every time you find yourself worrying about what other people are thinking about you, do something radical. Masticate a fiver and swallow. Or bury your face in the cat litter. Cognitive behavioural therapy. You’ll soon stop giving a damn about other people’s perceptions.

At number nine, people regretted not having learned to play a musical instrument. A regret for you, maybe, but your next-door neighbour is probably marginally happier than he or she might have been had they endured the hours of chord practice.

Finally, some regret not having found out more about their grandparents. Well, invent something: you know, granny was a masterful woman; if it hadn’t been for the wooden teeth, she would have made a skilled locksmith.

There’s a big empty-skied January world out there. Let’s find a pair of walking shoes and bin our misgivings along with yesterday’s paper hats.