An Old Year’s New Year

From a word document dated 1/1/2012

It’s hard to believe that a year has ended. A year that brought with it more twists and turns than was ever thought possible. Where the time has gone, we shall never know. We took wrong paths, we made serious mistakes. We dreamed and made wishes without knowing the consequences. We never looked over our shoulder to see how fast life was catching up to us. We just plowed forward. Pushing on and on. We questioned the far distant future, but didn’t pause to check where our next footstep would land. The decision not to make big decisions was made hastily, and we ended a lot of things before they ever began.  We moved on from what we wanted so as not to miss possibilities that we had no guarantee of liking. We made judgments far too soon and far too late.  We jumped when we should have paused, and we paused when we should have jumped. We sat still waiting for the second hand to tick by, never noticing when we were supposed to change the page on the calendar. The times we think we’re being grown up are the times we look back on as childish errors, while some of the simplest things we think and say are by far the deepest. We have been emptied and we have been filled. We have laughed and we have cried. We have built and we have broken. We have loved and we have pushed away. We have been cold as ice and we have been on fire. We have held hands and we have given the cold shoulder. We have reached to the heavens and we have sunk past our knees. We have laid our souls bare, and we have lied. We have chased and we have hidden. We have been proud and then disappointed. We have met new people and lost track of long known friends. We have loved our lives and we have wanted to escape them. We have studied hard and we have procrastinated. We have stayed up all night, and slept it off. We have given more than we had, and we have taken more than we know. We have left fighting, and later returned to apologize. We have felt alone, then realized it is our fault we’ve been staying secluded. We have learned things about ourselves, and then chosen to ignore it. We have tried to change the course of our lives, and have only become more like ourselves. We have tried to be “individual” and ended up that much more like everyone else. We have lost sight of what is good to us, and we have embraced something else simply because it’s new. We still don’t know where we’re going. We expect things to change, but a new year is the same as a new day, though we fail to realize that. Now that it’s a new year we make all these resolutions and we swear that this year we’ll stand by them. We forget that it’s just another day. No matter how much we hope things can change because it’s 2012 instead of 2011, the fact is, only determination and faith will let us grow. Let’s face it – we all screw up – we screw up pretty damn badly. We do so much that we thought we’d never do, and it’s almost never in a good direction. Every new day should be treated the way we treat this New Year. Each new day should be full of resolutions to not be reflections of yesterday. That’s it. Clearly we can’t expect more of ourselves, look how much we’ve messed up already. Don’t let things get too heavy for your shoulders. Do you know how much of that we could just chuck out the window? We don’t have to carry the last twenty years on our backs. The only part we have to keep is the part that has become written into our selves. The rest is excess. The rest is over, gone. Leave it where it lies – move past that shit.

Here’s to every day being a fresh start!