Raise Your Hand!

Raise your hand if 2016 has been the worst year of your life.

Someone on Twitter captured it perfectly in a tweet: ‘2016 has been some like joke like play year oh.’

Perfectly. This year has been one of the most shocking, in all my life, to be mild. Swinging into 2016 I had a sort of vision, of how the year was going to go. No, I wasn’t praying that there’d be showers of gold, and unicorns, and rainbows. In 2015 some…foundations had been laid, and I figured that this year they sort of would be built upon. Things would follow a logical progression. In my subconscious I had a somewhat defined picture of how the year was going to go.

But, it was like when this picture was forming, this was 2016. 

Oh, you have no idea what’s coming to you!

I didn’t. A lot happened this year that left me shaken, and broken, and utterly confused, and sometimes just downright mad. The jolly-yet-realistic expectations my mind had drawn up just took one look at me, gave me a lopsided smile, and morphed into their exact opposites.

You are sooooo dramatic.

Naturally, I can’t wait for this year to pass, so I can say it’s all behind me. And it’s likely that many of the people who’ve had similar negative experiences this year feel the same. But, it’s…not like the entry into another year is a sudden promise of a differently coloured sky. The streets aren’t suddenly going to turn silver, just because we swap the final digit of this year for a 7 (which, needless to say, is my favourite number). My phone isn’t going to magically transform into a Marvel-worthy device capable of holographic projections.

It’s not like 2016 is one planet, and the strike of 12 a.m. on 1^st January 2017 is a portal that sends us to another planet with more agreeable conditions. The days are still going to have twenty-four hours. If you work in a restaurant, you may go on working there. If you have a habit of twirling your hair around your finger, chances are you’ll keep right at it.

Still it doesn’t stop us from hoping that 2017 will be better. People spend the final days of every year making all these super resolutions about how they’re going to read one book each week, or go to the gym every weekday, or acquire telekinetic abilities. And they’re just crossing their fingers for the first of January, ze fuhst of Januahee, le prémier jour de Janvier…

Because it’s a…momentous moment?

Hands up, I’m a culprit. I’ve waited for momentous moments too. Maybe we all have, because they’re, well, momentous, and defining, and impactful. But what we forget is, we CAN create our own momentous moments.

Every day is a chance. We could wait for a new year, and celebrate it, and kick it off with renewed gusto and willpower to make things right. But if we’d be truly circumspect (I just completely used that word without understanding it) we could celebrate every new…month, or every new week, and every new day. (If you’re petty you could celebrate every hour and minute and second, and…the rest.) And each new moment presents an opportunity to be better.

I loooove Bob Marley.

If you have the chance to make something better, why wait for another time? That we realize that something has got to change is good. When we realize that something has got to change is the perfect, purrfect time to change it, if it’s within our power. 2016 has been awful for some of us, but there are still (uhh…31 - 6 is 25. Aha) 25 days before the year ends. Why wait for a new year to turn things around? Or, you haven’t suffered enough? 

You’re not going to hit major success just because you choose a momentous moment. You’re going to be successful if you make the most of your moments.

So, whatchu wan’ do? Write that book? Start now. Learn coding? Please, go on. (Okay I should stop talking about myself.) You want to eat healthier? I know the temptation of saying ‘Lemme eat my last spring roll and start’ is just weighing you down, so please eat it. Right now. Now go and eat unhealthy no more. You want to treat people better? Tune in to Shawn Mendes, right now. You want to dance on ice? Go to Canada. It’s always winter there, isn’t it?

Point is, start now. Because you can enter 2017 with a smile you’re already wearing in 2016.