Ian On The Red Dot

Happy New Year.  But why should a new year be happy?  Why is the 1st of January such an important day that it deserves a holiday?

One of the possible reasons is that as humans, we need new year days to help us construct a narrative for our lives.  The 31st of December is the last page of one chapter and the 1st of January the start of a new one.  It allows us to nicely compartmentalize all the decisions that were made, actions that were taken, events that were experienced, emotions that were felt in one period of time.

Instead of seeing our lives as a continuous narrative, we are given the luxury of breaking it up into discrete components and each new year is a chance to say that things will be different - that this component of our lives will have different decisions, actions, events and emotions.

I feel such thinking handicaps us.

It handicaps us because we start seeing the new year as the only point where things can begin to be different.  It shouldn’t be the case.  Each new day should be started with the same optimism and hopes that we start our new year.  Each night before we go to sleep, we should spend some time on reflection and resolve to do better the next day.  Each morning that we awake, we should be thankful that we have a chance to live better.

I wish everyone that they would be able to start this new year living their lives where every night is ended with the same reflection that happens at the end of the year and every morning begins with the same type of optimism and hopes that we start the new year.

Let’s make every day count this new year.