Mercurial Goals for the New Year

1-3-09 (it took me awhile to get this up)

Another year is here. One year seems to just blend into the next and the most noticeable effect on my life is how often I have to scratch out "08" and scribble in "09" when I'm writing dates. I'm certain it will take a month before I'm able to correctly write those dates with any regularity.

There are many who disdain the New Year. For instance, a close friend hates the first months of the year because the gym parking lot is always so crowded. The irony of his discontent is palpable.

I've never been quite so negative about the first of the year. Despite this, it's hard for me to be excited about the passing of time. Perhaps I too easily see the morbid reality of the new year. The dire inevitability of our existence.

Putting me at further odds, I've never been much of a New Year's resolution man. It mayn't be the best book by which to live one's life but, at least in a way, I abide by Calvin's system of resolutions. While Calvin's noticeable egotism is on full display throughout the Calvin & Hobbes series, it is truly crystallized in strips dealing with New Year resolutions. In his eyes resolutions are meant for everyone else. Unfortunately, I'm not that self-centered. While Calvin rejects the idea of resolutions for himself, I instead reject the confining structural limits of New Year's resolutions. My own trite outlook, be the change you want to see, is not meant to be dictated by the calendar.

Though he is, like us all, a flawed individual, I've always envied Calvin. Not for his imagination, or his astute feline friend, or even for the adventure he sees in every day life; instead I envy him for his clarity. That's the one truly attractive benefit of living a self-centered life. Everything in the world makes sense when you are at its center (which is of course why most struggle to find it).

So, if I was pressed to provide a resolution for this new year, it would be a simple one. It is of course my deepest desire, the one that forever seems just out of my reach. In 2009, just like the years that came before it, my resolution is finding clarity, the elusive goal for all of humanity.