Resolutions for a New Hare

I’ve decided that I’m a little too competitive.

In the new year, I’d like to be less competitive. I’d also like to win more races. Not because I’m going to be competitive, because I won’t be, or, at the very least, I’ll be less competitive, but ideally, I won’t be competitive at all, and so competitiveness will have nothing to do with the fact that I will absolutely dominate every race I enter.

Less cutthroat enthusiasm, more trophies.

More winning.

And so I am resolved.

I’d like to befriend more tortoises. I currently have no tortoise friends, and I think that’s a problem. I think that’s a big problem for me. I want to understand tortoises. I want to know how they tick. Not so I can use that information to beat them at races. That’s not it at all. Why would you even suggest that? I’d simply like to know more about them, because they’re so fascinating. Besides, they won’t be winning more races anyway, because the first time was a fluke. Do you know what a fluke is? A fluke is when you’re a hare and you take a quick nap in the middle of a race, because you went a little too hard the night before at Benny Badger’s Pub in anticipation of a big victory, and you think you can squeeze in a little slumber, because you’re racing a TORTOISE, and the next thing you know, you’re waking up to the sound of a crowd cheering on some dumb reptile who took advantage of your state of exhaustion. Clearly, one thing I’m going to learn about tortoises this year is that they have no sense of integrity. What kind of creature would crawl past their competitor while he was asleep instead of waking him up so that he could beat them fair and square?

Not that I plan on focusing anymore on negative incidents from my past.

In fact, that’s the next item on the resolution list my therapist is making me write.

“Do not focus so much on the past.”

See, I put quotes around it and everything.

I am not going to spend the rest of my life berating myself just because I had to take a siesta for the good of my mental health while some uncaring reptile giddily laughed in my face as he stole a moment of glory from me. It’s not my problem that tortoises don’t care about mental health. I’m sorry they’re made to be so unfeeling, but hares are not, and I have to take solace in that. Hares only live to be about three or four years old. I’m two, and that explains why I had a breakdown after the race. It wasn’t because I lost, because I didn’t. Not really. If you think about how many alternate realities there are, you have to know that I probably won that race in all the realities where I didn’t stop to take a nap. And since I probably won the majority of races in other realities, that means, overall, I’m the winner. I’m the winner and I’m two-years-old, which means the breakdown wasn’t a breakdown, but a break-through. It was a mid-life opportunity, which is the word my therapist uses instead of “crisis.” She doesn’t believe there is such a thing as a crisis. Only an opportunity for growth.

I am growing. Just not my ears, hopefully, right?

Hahahaha

I resolve to try stand-up comedy in the new year.

I believe I can take my pain and use it to heal others. Other animals who should have been rewarded for their natural skill and ability, but, instead, were cheated by animals with shells. I bet somewhere there’s a leopard losing a marathon to a hermit crab. I want to help that leopard. I want him to know that the hermit crab is a sad, pathetic little loser who might go around thinking he’s special just because he won a single race, but that, if he was a real winner, he’d agree to a rematch, like the one I suggested to the tortoise.

No surprise here, but the tortoise doesn’t want to race me again. I thought it would be fun if we started off the year with a second race. Just for fun. Just for laughs. I said we could do it for charity. All the money we raise could go to a Home for Wayward Tortoises so they don’t grow up thinking that cheating is acceptable. The tortoise didn’t want to hear it. Both because he wasn’t interested and because he doesn’t really have ears. I had made a resolution to win a rematch, and now the new year hasn’t even started, and I’ve already broken one of my resolutions, and whose fault is that?

Not mine.

Not that I want to lay the blame. I’m done laying blame. My next resolution says “No laying blame.” It’s in quotations, and I even underlined it.

And so I am resolved.

I no longer blame myself for being overly confident. Confidence is, after all, a good thing. If anybody should be blamed, it’s my mother for convincing me that I could do anything. Clearly, that was a lie. Clearly, I cannot do anything. Clearly, I cannot take a nap in the middle of a race and still win that race. I wish she had clarified her position when she told me that I could achieve anything I put my mind to. Had she merely said, “You can achieve anything you put your mind to provided you don’t take a nap while you’re putting your mind to it,” maybe things would have turned out differently for me.

Who’s to say?

No blame here.

Not one bit.

But if there was a bit, that bit would go to my mother.

And to the tortoise for having no sportsmanship.

And to the officials in charge of the race for refusing to disqualify the tortoise for illegally refusing to wake up his competition.

Luckily for all those folks, there isn’t going to be any blame in the new year.

Or bitterness.

Or hard feelings.

Just a new hare ready to take on the world with zero competitive antagonism and an open mind that wants to learn all about tortoises for no particular reason and definitely not so he can destroy them all anytime they dare decide to race against him.

I’m going to put quotations around all of that, and take it with me when I see my therapist this afternoon.

Until then, I think I’ll take a quick nap.

I promised myself that next year I would get a lot more sleep.