Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Saturday, January 03, 2009

zero nine

At first glance, 2009 is setting up to be a nondescript year. The elections are finally done with. No Olympics of any kind, nor any other significant world sporting events for that matter. As usual, work and school will resume on Monday, and as usual, the sun will rise. Nondescriptly.

Those who look forward to waking up each morning would disagree.

I can't say that I'm there yet. I don't remember the last time I looked back on a year, contently folded my hands and concluded, "You know, this was a great year." Assessing life at the end of the week? Sure, I'll be able to point to a few good ones. But yearly? No way. At least not yet. We are a very forgetful species. And as a result, we're not as thankful as we ought to be.

I think I need to never lose sight of the small, seemingly-trivial things that happen in my life. Because when you add them all up, shouldn't it explain the unrecognizable, unpredictable places we'll be at in five, ten, twenty years from now? That it's usually the small things that bring definition to the big things that happen in our lives. During the years of puberty, no one wakes up one morning and freaks out because they're suddenly five inches taller. It's never like that. It's because of the unseen, daily stretches of growth that occurs on the atomic level... and maybe we've forgotten to give enough credence to the small decisions we make everyday.

I could only summarize all this blabber with this. In the simple yet poignant words said by Brenden Foster, when asked about what he thought were the best things in life, his immediate reply: "Just having one."

Happy new year.