My Thoughts on Why the New Year is Important

So I feel bad that I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been busy working through my own stuff so I haven’t felt passionate about anything one way or another for a while. A while. Anyway, that’s why my last five posts have been kind of cop outs. But I decided it was time to write something thoughtful again, especially since that appears to be what you guys prefer. So I give you my thoughts on why the New Year is important.

Before we talk about why the New Year is important, let’s talk about why it shouldn’t be. What is a year? “Year” is just the name we give to a single rotation of the Earth around the sun. Should there be any sort of important emphasis on a day that could just as easily be any other day of the year? I mean, if we chose to start the year on March 25 then January first wouldn’t hold any importance at all. It’d be just another day, like April 10, December 28, or July 20. So then, why put such emotional, personal, and cultural significance on a day that is only significant because we chose it to be? I think that this is a valid argument as to why January 1 is a day like any other, but I don’t think that removes its significance. Every day is significant. Those dates above are each significant. They are my mother’s birthday, the day I became a Christian, and the day we landed on the moon, respectively. Every one of those days holds extreme importance for many, many people: everyone my mom has ever interacted with, me, and every person on this planet. So I think it is pretty safe to dismiss the idea that a random day can even be insignificant, as you can pick any day and find something important that has happened on that day - whether it was life being extinguished, being lit, being engorged by something amazing like love, or simply continuing. Every day is important because there is something unique and amazing in every day.

So then, we know every day is important, but that still leaves the doubt that the beginning of a year is what makes January 1 significant. Perhaps it’s only important because it’s a day just like any other, that is to say, a day unlike any other. I would say otherwise. See, I think the significance of a New Year is important to that day. (In rebuttal to my earlier point that the New Year could be any day so thus insignificant, that’s idiotic. We didn’t put it on any other day. We put it on January 1. So shut up.) For though the World goes on rotating and revolving, it is begins anew every year. The constellations start their migrations across the sky over and the seasons begin their cycle again. But nothing is quite the same. The constellations change based on the expansion of the universe and whether or not some star somewhere has twinkled its last. The seasons change their specificities based on the changes to the atmosphere. The world is constantly changing, and though it starts its cycle over, it never repeats the exact same cycle. In the same way, we may be experiencing January first again (second now), but this is a new January 2. This is January 2, 2013. And we’ve never had that before. And we’ll never have it again. This moment is brand new and it only lasts as long as it is right there. So we have to embrace that newness. So the New Year is significant because it is us starting over as something new.

But that is not all that makes the New Year important. Indeed, it is not even the most important aspect of the New Year. What’s most important about the New Year is the gusto with which we approach it. See we know the year is new. We know this year has never been and never will be again. So we also know that we need to seize that moment while it is there and to make it the best year we have each experienced. Resolutions have become a bit of a joke in our culture – the idea that we’re all going to be in the gym for the next two weeks then we’re all going to be back at Kentucky Fried Chicken. But they are not all failures. And while we may like our deep fried, genetically altered, oil sponges KFC calls chicken, we still try to improve every year. No one approaches the New Year thinking “this year I need to be worse.” And if they do they are a waste of space. We all want to improve. We are all hoping, and some of us even striving, to improve ourselves and the world around us. That, my friends, is why the New Year is important. Not because of alcohol and stupid ass glasses made out of numbers, but because we all know deep in our bones that the way we are is crap, or at the very least mediocre, and that we need to be constantly bettering ourselves. The New Year is significant not only because it is new, but because it will hopefully be improved. And that is the only time that statement hasn’t been an oxymoron that I’m aware of.

What saddens me is that we lose sight of that in a week. Like clockwork, we all lose sight of the fact that we are like the Earth and every moment is a new one for us. And since every moment is new, and we have the capacity to improve ourselves and everything around us, it is our responsibility as stewards of the Earth to actually do that. We develop this odd philosophy somehow that the status quo is “ok.” We are the way we are. There is nothing we can do about that, so we just won’t. But that’s not the case, every one of us has some improvement to make on ourselves, and saying so isn’t offensive. It’s offensive that people think they have nothing to do to improve themselves. So I know it’s a long shot, but I remain hopeful that one year, maybe this year, we won’t forget. And we will constantly strive to better everything we can – for ourselves, for our family, for our friends, for (our) strangers, and for our home.

Happy New Year everyone. Make 2013 a good one.