Happy New Year!

We celebrate the new year with fireworks

We celebrate the new year with fireworks

That’s the standard greeting one hears during the first couple weeks of the year. As the year progresses no one greets you with hopes for a happy year. What’s the big deal anyway. Last Thursday followed last Wednesday like it usually does. And the weeks will continue to pass in similar fashion. What is a year but a measurement of time, a culmination of months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, nanoseconds! Really!, the year could have easily have started the following week if the romans (I think they’re to blame) had opted for a 372 day year. The Chinese and Jews celebrate the new year on different days even. So really what’s the big deal? It’s just another day of another year!

Humor me for a minute longer as I continue to over-analyze something everyone has come to accept as normal. So what’s so special about a new year that it fills people with hope and expectation? The weeks before, people will say they are ‘looking forward to the new year’. Why? Out come the new year resolutions, the lifestyle changes and for some new furniture and fixtures maybe even a new car. What family tradition rules your life at this time?

Its something about having a fresh start and January 1st brings that fresh start feeling everyone wants. We all crave for a fresh start in some area of our life and January 1st seems to be perfect for that. The months repeat and we feel as if we started over. But did we really? We didn’t get any younger. What’s to prevent us from making that lifestyle change on March 12th or August 6th or December 23rd. January 1st might just as well be day 733280 AD for all the meaning it has. I think the change in seasons affect people’s lives much more profoundly than January 1st does. Yet we place so much importance in it and attribute life decisions to it. Think about it. What did you put off doing waiting for the new year that could have easily been done when you first thought about it.

Let’s not become slaves to the measurement of time. And I’m going to sound cliche but let’s make the most of every moment we’re alive. To my readers, may every second of every day of every week of every month this year 2009 bring you health, prosperity and peace. Happy New Year!