At Year's End

What a year 2008 has been. Full of ups and downs and left and rights. But at the end of it all I find myself thankful for everything and everyone that I have encountered. Isn't that the point of life anyways? I mean, to be frank, we really will never know the point to all of this insanity. But we should relish on every situation, on every event that we endure. So much focus this year has been on the future, whether or not it is bleak or hopeful. Our outrageous election cycle was so forward-thinking we didn't seem to even glance at the still sitting administration. 2008 was a year in which we seemed to become so bogged down by the negatives that we couldn't even enjoy the good in life that was still around. Sure, our economy is royally fucked, both nationally and internationally. And there is chaos brewing in many places in our world today. But what happened to an intelligent consciousness? We have gotten to overwhelmed with the bad that we have failed to realize that good can only be produced when we instigate it. We are waiting for our hero and savior, whether that is our new president, or his economic team, or some other entity that has yet to be revealed. We are waiting for this mythical hero to ride in and fix everything that has been broken over the course of this year and those before it.

But what is being left unsaid is the fact that one man or being can only do so much. The only way to fix our economy, education, health care, violence at home and in the rest of the world is to empower ourselves to do something about it. Singularly we are weak and ill=prepared, but collectively humans can solve dramatic and insurmountable problems. History has shown us this very clearly. When our entire world was consumed in warfare, we figured it out. When our economies were completely bankrupt, we endured and revived them. Even when our young country was itself split in two by waring factions, we were able to once again unite the all of the states.

This upcoming year I am throwing away pessimism and procrastination. I am sick of dealing with cannot's and will not's, both in myself and in those surrounding me. We collaboratively can achieve whatever we set our minds to, but we have become so lazy and comfortable with having the hard work done by others that we no longer are enthused to do anything notable. This kind of a statement is brilliantly narrated in Pixar's WALL-E, which was released this summer. In it, future humans are the blubbiest, fattest, most laziest creatures ever to be realized in an animated movie (aside from that horridly fat Ursula via Little Mermaid), and they had left all the work to the droids and robots.

Back in high school I worked very diligently on an organization called Invisible Children. I presided over a school club and we communally raised a few thousand dollars for suffering children in Uganda, Africa who were fearing abduction by a religious rebellion army hellbent on taking over the region with brainwashed child soldiers. I was so moved by a documentary detailing their hardships that I had to do something about it. I committed myself to try to understand their struggles and to become humbled by it. After all, I was a bratty well-looked after middle class american white boy, what the hell did I know about pain and suffering?

But then that humbled feeling began to pass as college approached. In the wild jungle of Arizona State University I became consumed with the material desires that had filled the mines of all others around me. It wasn't even simply about what brand you were wearing any more, instead it was about every material possession you had to your name. What car you drove, how much you could spend on drugs and alcohol, whether you could afford lavish trips elsewhere to more wealthy touristy locations, what kind of TV you propped in your dorm, what kind of laptop and the many electrical accessories you accompanied yourself with as you walked around campus. If you were able to omit yourself from such judgments and desires during this period then I will either bow at your feet for such utter nonconformity or simply call bullshit, for it ran so rampantly even amongst the trendy and indiependent crowds.

I am truly ashamed at how such a form of living could be so seemingly likable and desirable, but then again, our entire country was in that same mindset. Which is partially why we are in such a mess of things at year's end. Instead of holding back our absurd desires and phony necessities, we sought out loans and financing to live whatever materialized life we could squander. Buying up TVs and sports cars, numerous houses and literal tons of plastic commodities shipped right from China's doorstep. In our efforts to create prestigious individual lifestyles we have unraveled the beauty of modern man.

And so at this point you're probably asking what is even beautiful in men, for I have been rambling on and on about the evils our society has bought into. And this brings me to the point of this post and also to my main New Year's resolution. What I hope to do in this new year and what I hope we as a nation and a world can begin to do is to focus on more than simply ourselves. Let us regain what love we can for all humans, for what destruction and chaos and the bad times show us is that all we have is everyone else. We can latch on to materials and bureaucratically produced wealth or we can find true happiness in those who we love, and other's who are far less fortunate than us. I am tired of bitching about the kind of car I drive or the clothes I wear. In this upcoming year I will struggle to understand why all of that has no real meaning and matters very little to life itself.

There are people in the world with literally nothing, and since this global financial meltdown, those numbers are dramatically rising. I cannot in good consciousness continue to care for the petty insignificant problems and dramas I face on a daily basis, there simply is no reason. I must regain a sense of understanding in the common man, I must find once more my love for every soul on this earth, the misunderstood and the cowards, and everyone in between.

But I must also commit myself to this ideal. I must commit myself to the work necessary to make other's lives better. Instead of buying a red cupped latte, a red ipod, or any other of those heavily marketed "do-good" materials that companies are convincing me will make some sort of an impact on the world if I buy into it, I must actually DO SOMETHING about what's wrong in this world. And in this act I hope and pray that others will begin to follow, and that a wave of good can once more wash over our world and we will once more start caring about more than our little selves.

Realize this: life is brutally short. In the next year you might very well be six feet deep under root and dirt. Will your possessions endure with you into the afterlife? Will your god be proud of what you have done with yourself? Maybe you have no god and your bones and flesh will decompose themselves into nothingness and there will be no more you. Yes this is a majorly bleak outlook on "the end", but it should serve as a wake up call that we are all heading to the same place. It's just what we do on the way that makes us unique, that sets us apart, and that gives us meaning to our lives.

Happy New Year, let's seriously make this next one more than the other's we've lived through. Let's do entirely new things and grasp entirely new and bold concepts. Let's break the molds that have held us down and turned our lives into blandness. When the clock strikes 12 and a new year is upon us, take some time to consider all of this in the newly minted minutes of '09.


yours truly,
Drew


"However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society." - Henry David Thoreau