New?

The New Year.  Funny term -- New.  If you think about it, nothing is really new in the New Year.  All of the old, good and bad, just trickles into the next morning, after the ball drops.  Nope, after 2008 turned into 2009 I did not magically revert back into a new born, I was still me, an eighteen year old with a lot of dreams, and few answers; the country still remained its old, used, bankrupt model.  Yep, everything around me was just as it was, the earth was still the earth, my house was still my house, my family was still my family, my life was still my life, with the same memories, the same bruises, the same battle scars, and the same successes.  

When the clock struck twelve, everything in my life did not suddenly upgrade to a new, shiny, perfect, spotless model, everything was just as it was, the same life that I had created for myself, year after year, countdown after countdown, "new" year after "new" year.  2008 piled on top of 2007, and so on and so on.  New is not exactly what I would call the year, as it evokes a more physical image in my mind.  "New" is meant to be a mental reassurance for us humans, but physically, the term "new" is a far fetched fairy tale.  So this year I grounded myself, let go of the fairy tales, and dealt with reality-- New Years Eve is never the magical revelation, or epiphanic moment we idealize, and the New Year is just a new date,  and regardless of the year, your life is still your life.

But today, New Years Day, began and ended with great strides towards resolution and great hope for the rest of the coming "New" Years.  I am taking this year of opportunity to put forth the change I want to see in my life, and to create myself, not into a new person, but into an older, wiser, more self-assured, more driven, and more comfortable me. (Who wants to be new? I'd have to make the same mistakes all over again, and re-learn all of the lessons I already know.) 

You see my problem with "New" is that it suggests that the slate is wiped clean.  It is a new year, but it is not a new world.  Personally, and nationally, we are still the same, with the same opportunities for growth, for resolution, for change...and the earth is lucky enough to be given another year in which to do so.