2010

Well here we are folks, into another decade, shall we take a moment to marvel at the wonder of it? Do we have to? New Years seems like a bit of a silly holiday to me. I know this is going to seem a bit gloomy and pessimistic, but stay with me here. This is a holiday where people pretend to make their little resolutions which, let's be honest, will likely not make it past the two week mark. We talk about how things will be so much different in the next year, when really they will be pretty much the same. I think it would be a fantastic New Years if something different really did happen on January 1st. Perhaps the sun could rise in a weird, hunter green shade, or, on the stroke of midnight, the earth's gravity changed ever so slightly so that we all had the effect of loosing that ten pounds or so we all claim to intend to lose.

Earlier this week I went out to dinner with a good friend of mine (due to an illness that has swept through my house, this was the only thing even vaguely close to a new years celebration I will have this year) and I asked him if he had any New Years resolutions. I'd like to take just a moment here to say that I have only ever stuck to one resolution I have made, and that was to stop making resolutions at New Years, it works really, really well. Back to the dinner and my companion, when I posed this simple and common question, I got a wonderful response. "No," he said, "I don't make New Years resolutions. My resolutions start whenever I feel the need to make them, and that isn't usually New Years."

Okay, so maybe that isn't a completely direct quote, but I'm sure you get the point.

What I wonder is why we feel the need to take one night at midnight and try to make it into a day to change our lives? Why can we not all live like my good friend, and work towards self-reflection and self-improvement every day? To me, New Years seems much like Remembrance Day and Valentine's Day, we do on that day what we should be doing on every other day of the year.

So that's my New Years reflection for this year: wondering why everyone needs to make a New Years reflection. Yeah, I don't get it either.

Lisa