New Year! So what?

I've spent the whole day at work greeting my patients a "Happy New Year!", with enthusiasm I would follow up with how they spent the new year, did they plan anything special, or in any way do anything different.

I was sadly met with jaded indifference.

Photo by Chris Buckwald on Unsplash  

An important lesson I have learned about life is how time affects us, and how little we take the present for granted. The elderly have seen so much, gone through so much, that the only thing they can look forward to is the grave.

There will come a time when your body gives up, you become too tired, too bored, too lonely. As you grow old, love ones will die and you sit in your empty house hoping that your children will call. If you are lucky, maybe you'll get a ring once a week, but as with most people maybe not at all.

I reflect on the way I treat my parents, how often do I call? I think about my brothers, when have we talked last? Have I had any deeper conversations with my old friends?

The way I see it, we are all in rails, going through the same patterns in the valleys of time. We are once young, optimistic and full of dreams. Then reality hits, you have bills to pay, children to feed, assholes to work with, forty years go by and you are fat, full of disease and jaded at your inability to adapt to the changes in the world.

When you need someone else to help you take a shit, and sit alone in your empty house, how could a new year be something you look forward to?

So what is the point? You make new goals, only to quit a few days in. You make promises you hope people will forget. You celebrate surviving, as if you haven't been doing that everyday of the past 365 days. As my patients have proven, today is no different than any other day.

I don't want to be that depressed though.

Purpose is the key.

I can look forward to the next day because I'm fulfilling a purpose, a reason for existence. I want to wake up knowing that the day will be dedicated to something.

So for the new year, I am hoping that most people would be fulfilling their purpose. That each day is spend dedicated to a worthwhile goal, something that they want to do, that benefits the people around them and society at large.

As much as people would want to just make a new years resolution, I wish for people to make a life's resolution, a goal that is not just for the year but for the rest of their life. So that as their twilight comes in and they sit on their chair alone in their empty house, they can close their eyes saying that the life they lived was worth it.

Happy New Year to everybody!