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Happy New Year!
It is 2019 and you start making promises to yourself, ones similar to last year’s, the year before, and the year before that too. You start noticing a pattern in your resolutions and realize that you could not keep those promises, inevitably breaking them. No, the promises were never deliberately broken; they just seem to have lost themselves in the midst of life with all its busy, unpredictable events and its little obstacles which you think may have thrown you off track.
Never wait for a mere change of a digit in a year to set goals you have always dreamed of achieving. Who said that the mesmerizing fireworks mark the beginning of a new you? Is the new year ‘Snapchat’ filter your true motive to working on a better you? Is the same phrase, which is shouted in unison after the typical countdown every time the Earth completes a turn revolving around the sun, what really encourages you to finally set goals and work your best to achieve them? A human is simply too complex in structure and function and too significant to be driven in such shallow manner.
Say it was a random Wednesday in May and you had the urge to learn playing a new instrument, should you do it the next day or must you wait until the clock reads 12:00 AM on December 31st? It is almost as if procrastination, hesitance, and, reluctance are encoded in our DNA; we feel the need to restrain and restrict ourselves to certain limitations that do not truly limit our abilities, yet we still use them as excuses to revel in temporary happiness. If you’re trying to save up for something you’ve always wanted to buy; if you are planning to adopt a new hobby or sport; if you would like to learn any language, be it Chinese, Russian, or Italian, or if you are simply trying to become a better person, a better friend, a better daughter, or a better student, start now. There is no better time to start than today. Tomorrow is never promised; one will never know if today is the last day they get to witness a sunset, if it is the last time they get to savor their favorite food, or if it’s the last time they find refuge in their favorite person’s arms. It could even be the last time their eyes linger on that corner of the room. The only tangible moment is the one you are living in right now, so make the most of it. Do not anticipate the new year or make it your green light or take it as your cue to begin a task or become a ‘better you’. That green light could be any day of the year, be it December 4th or March 14th, at 4:00 AM or 2:26 PM, it simply does not matter.