Another Year...

... another broken resolution.

Another year has passed. As dusk set upon 2004, the dawn of hopes, dreams, and aspirations embodied in Holiday Sales and annual New Year's resolutions heralded a new turn in this world's relentless path around the sun. In years past I have written thoughts and ideologies of friendship, cherishing my experiences with the people I held so dear with pleasantries and euphemisms, trying to capture the meaning of our relationships. However, due to my altogether horrific track record this year in maintaining ties with my friends, I've decided that to write such a memoir would be an empty mockery of my writings past. So instead I shall comment on New Year's resolutions.

New Year's resolutions: America's excuse to take the time and reflect to better themselves only once every 365 days. The path of man throughout his existence is one of mistakes, shortcomings, and faults. It is the imperfect beings that we are that seemingly allow us to strive to become better ones. Perfection in a world of perfection is not perfection, but rather a matter of commonplace uniformity. But this is hardly a matter to consider in our lives, for we all have our unique chinks and scrapes that characterize us as the imperfect personages that we are. Yet we still hold our ideals. Some scratches are seen as more desirable than others; some etchings more pure; some shapes more ideal. These are the molds that we aspire to in our lives, and yet as a nation we have decided to allow this pursuit to surface in the forefront of our minds once at the beginning of every year. At the "beginning," though our calendar and markings on the endless string of time is arbitrary in and of itself. Why not mark February 1st or March 2nd? Is the cold of winter a symbol of rebirth when it may be spring or fall that allows life to grow once more? A moot argument.

Should not man challenge his life every day, as his mistakes and follies are ever so present in each one? Are not these New Year's resolutions but a self serving form of hopes and prayers, thoughts of those that mean well but are slow to act believing this will serve their purpose in bringing to pass change? The devil is a friend of idleness, yet it would not surprise me if the bedfellow of idleness were inconsistency. Life is about change. If we allow ourselves the pleasure of breathing, feeling, laughing, and in short living each day, should we not make time for improving ourselves in stride? A New Year's resolution is a symbol of all that is meant to be broken in the year to come. A New Day's resolution a symbol of all that we intend to change today. That is not to say that these assertions should be demoted to fickle fancies of the mind that enter into our passive thoughts, but rather they should be more rooted essences of our consciousness than what the capitalistic enterprise of the holidays would allow us to believe they are.

It is not perfection that makes a man a god, but rather the pursuit for perfection that makes him truly divine.