Another clean slate

My new year's resolutions this year are simple. Well, in theory they are.

1. Patience. This one pops up every year. It sounds so straightforward. Patience: the quality of being patient. Far too often the flow of life catches us in its wake. We're swept into it; oftentimes without a modicum of sense and even so, we drive forth with vigor. With checklist in hand, mind, scrawled on paper, whatever feeds our fancy, we do things; checking items off left and right.. feeding our self-made responsibilities.. always moving forward from point A to point B. It's a life of go, go, go.. do this, do that.. hurry, hurry, hurry as we rush from one task to another, one place to another.. all in the name of performing our duties, checking off our obligations. Accordingly, this brings me to my next point...

2. ...appreciating the small things in life. As far back as I can remember, the questions of life that are continually brought up pertain to what's to come. Parents drive home the point of having a plan for the future as they pester us; asking about our lifelong plans.. what our next steps are.. how our actions will shape our future. One minute we're the apple of their eye, medallion around our neck, trophy on the shelf, or diploma in hand. But that's merely a flippant moment in time. It's lost before we even get a chance to rest on our laurels and savor it. We become so consumed with the need to accumulate achievements and recognitions throughout our lives that we forget that some of the most beautiful moments can be lived without even lifting a finger. We simply need to lift the haze from our eyes.. look up from whichever screen we've been glued to for the past however many seconds, minutes, hours, years; be it an iPod, laptop, television, cellphone, you name it. Just look up. Turn off the internet. Turn off technology. Live in the moment. Live with the people around you. Share with them, soak in their words of wisdom. Look out the window and rediscover the joy of nature; the joy of just being still and watching snowflakes magically fall from the endless abyss of the sky above.. the joy of watching millions of twinkling lights.. the joy of both nothing and everything.. the kind of joy that burns itself into our memory forever without costing a single cent.

3. This last resolution hit me as I was flying home from California. You see, ever since I hit middle school, the moment I stepped foot on an airplane my eyes shut immediately. I would power off and enter a stupor of sleep, awakened only by the hard thud of runway meeting the aircraft. For whatever reason this time, I looked out the window. I saw as the land below got tinier and tinier by the second.. until it looked like nothing more than a model enclosed in glass at a museum. A diminutive scale model; the kind I would put my greasy paws all over as I breathed wisps of air onto the glass panes. What happened to that 6 yr kid who marveled at everything? She disappeared; not completely.. just faded with time. Faded like the memories she once held, clear as crystal, of those most dear to her. Memories yellowed with time.. tattered, torn, and faded. I can't even recall the sound of my grandfather's voice.. his mannerisms.. his laugh. When was the last time I even put my life on pause to simply close my eyes and speak with him? ..and so my last resolution is to take hold of my life.. to take time to build and maintain memories.