Well. All right.
Because sometimes you can't look forward without looking back. You jump, I jump, Jack.
After all the dumb jokes "See you next yearrrrr!'' (which is actually cute and funny when I say it. Inflection) after the bubbly, and the countdowns, the glitz, the cake, the streamers, the ostentatious outfits, the dancing and yelling, you realize what it means to come into a new year.
And last night amidst the hullabaloo and dazzling, glittering, celebratory chaos of reigning in the new year, our beloved chance at 2011, the prospects of self improvement and starting over, I realized just how much the passing of time terrifies me. Even though I did in fact practice my numerals to avoid embarrassment (read: last year's three, shmoo, one gaffe) counting down terrified me. Terrified. A whole year past and all of a sudden everyone was gathered in front of the ABC network on the TV, simultaneously watching the peach drop and the crystal ball in Times Square and the little numbers at the bottom corner of the screen flashed 10...9...8 as we counted and all of a sudden I found myself yelling, out loud and in my head, "Too fast! This is going too fast!" The numbers were hurtling down to something, some unknowable event and ...7...6...5 I even tried to count "mississippily" just to make sure ABC had got it right, that the seconds they were advertising actually matched up with my standards, because for some reason I was just terrified at how quickly the year would transform...I held my breath and every other noise in the room faded away and I could hear the blood rushing between my ears and my own breathing as I fisted my hands and watched 2010 fade away 4...3...2...1...into 2011.
And even more terrifying...was how, at that point, I didn't feel any different.
Nothing changed.
I don't know really, what I was expecting. This certainly wasn't my first new year, it was my 18th in fact. But this one was different somehow. This time it meant more that time was passing. I don't know what buried part of me, deep down, didn't want 2011 to be realized, and I'm even less sure of what part of me was disappointed? relieved? when nothing very revolutionary happened. I was still who I was. I still am who I am. I still felt the same. Life would still go on. I don't know. If we had never decided to invent years- time would be an infinite string of events, and even since we do divide our time into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years...even if we do that, time still goes on in an infinite string of events. None of our silly human mechanics and contraptions will restrain time or life or space... Last year's woes don't magically disappear with the arrival of 2011, but, I think we need the idea that it does. The idea of a fresh start, a new day.We need a frame in which we can start over, something to work towards...
We need that chance. We need to be able to say to ourselves, "Next year I will be better, next year I will do more, next year I will make something of myself." We need a goal to work towards because for some reason it's hard for us to just change at will. It takes too much courage. It takes too much effort.
It's ironic how we can demand instant gratification yet fail completely at instant self improvement.
Ramblings aside, I will now set forth to do what I came to do. And that is reflect.
But now that I try, I don't really feel like it. The mistakes are still mistakes that exist, the regrets are still there, they won't stay in 2010, they won't magically become easier to handle now that I've moved onto writing a new number on my papers and notes (even though it's well into March before I remember it's not 2010 anymore)...And the good things will always be amazing memories that I know won't fade away. Looking back at this point right now, freshly woken up from a night of mischief, into a gray, raining, muggy first day of the year....2010 seems like a blur and I can't pick out specific events that quite describe just how truly amazing it was.
I graduated high school, I came to college, I made incredible new friends, I reunited with my old ones and realized how much love exponentially grows when you miss someone, I tried new things, I got dirty, I got hurt, I hurt people, I learned, I tried not to learn, and I grew up...I don't want to make a list of events because I know I'll always have the ones that matter and lose the ones that don't because that's what life does. It goes on. It barrels on like a runaway train. The sun will keep rising, the rain will keep falling, the 7 billion other people on this earth will keep living as long as they're supposed to, and I will still be here, for as long as I live and I have to live. And my resolution this year is to live. To really live. To live so that I die empty. To recognize that every single moment that passes is an irretrievable part of my life.
No one dies who's lived.
The end of the world will be no concern for people who've lived.
I'm so young and it feels like an enormous roll of blank canvas has rolled out in front of me, endlessly, and I've never felt quite so vigorously ready or so utterly terrified to go forth onto it and paint myself onto the world...but before this point, before this particular New Year's, I was still a kid. And now I have to start being my own person. I'm not in the high school system anymore, not in my parents' house. I wonder where I'll be in a few years, but that place depends on where I am right now. And you know what? Right at this moment...where I am...I'm ok. I'm ok and you're ok. We'll be ok.
2011, be kind.
