Will Harris wonders if you can really have it all

Shortly before Christmas, a friend of mine died. He wasn’t a close friend, but he was a nice guy and, at 34, far too young to bow out.

He’d been working as a nurse at a London hospital, having recently escaped our shared home town of Coventry, when – on just another shift, in a ward decked out with tinsel and Christmas cards – he tripped, and hit his head, and died.

January is a time when we are told to make our resolutions. Give up smoking, get in shape, learn a new skill; the re-setting of the clocks is a golden opportunity to write off the wrong-turns and missed opportunities of the departing year and set our sights on the person we want to become. Twelve months later, whether we’ve succeeded in our goals or not, each of us is compelled to make another resolution. Then another. It’s a strange tradition…

Maybe it’s a way of over-emphasising the control we have on our lives. If I spend less money on cigarettes, I will be able to go on more holidays. If I follow Dannii Minogue’s diet and exercise plan, I will be able to bag myself a hunky ex-rugby player, photogenic dual-nationality baby, and 386,000 followers on Twitter.

“He was a man on a mission, making little tweaks, little resolutions to change his life for the better”

Or something. In focusing our attention on making minor changes to the way we live, perhaps we’re trying to escape the fact that the big changes – those real, inescapable changes that shake us to our core – are largely out of our control. That’s not to say we shouldn’t try. The last time I bumped into my friend, he was in characteristically high spirits.

He’d just moved to the city, and was now contemplating another move, this time from nursing to social work. It was plain to see he was a man on a mission, making little tweaks, little resolutions to change his life for the better. That he was never able to reach his goal is a shock and a tragedy, but the fact he was already well on his way makes it feel better, somehow.
But the truth is, we will never have everything we want. None of us.

However much we tell ourselves we’re in control, the house always wins in the end. “We could all be hit by a bus tomorrow!” my octogenarian godmother is wont to cry, brandishing her stick while zooming off down the pavement on her mobility scooter. (In her case, of course, there’s nothing to guarantee the bus wouldn’t come off worse).

Which is why I sometimes wonder if we’ve got this New Year thing arse about face. Instead of worrying about the things we don’t have, maybe we should make a resolution to be grateful for the things we do. After all, anyone can have a beach-ready body like Nadia Sawalha. Even Nadia Sawalha managed it.