The Solar Calendar Resets Again

Oh, oh, oh, my scattered sad little bunnies, Happy New Year!

But really, when you think about it, what's so new about it after all? Isn't it the same old tired year recycled over and over? We sure do try to make it new, but how often do we actually succeed?

"This year, I'm going to lose 10 pounds"

"This year, I'm going to get a promotion"

"This year, I'm going to stop getting drunk and beating my wife"

However, chances are that this year you're 20 pounds fatter, still struggling to make your mortgage payment, and the only reason you've managed keep your hands off of your significant other is that you woke up after your last round of bourbon with a kitchen knife pressed to your genitals. When it comes down to it, the only thing that's actually new is that there's a bloody 8 where the 7 used to be.

An 8.Do you guys remember Y2K? Do you remember the hysteria about the millenium? Techies full of doom and gloom about the biggest computer glitch in history - "Planes will fall out of the sky! Missiles will launch automatically! You'll order a pepperoni pizza and get mushrooms instead!" The world was going to be a real, live Die Hard movie. That was at least exciting. Bill Clinton would have become our very own Harrison Ford, and can't you just imagine Kim Jeong Il as a twisted, sociopathic computer hacker with a hot kung-fu girlfriend?

And all the religious nutsos - "Jesus is coming back! The sky will roll back like a scroll and reveal New Jerusalem to the damned!" Sure, that'd suck exponentially more than Y2K - I'm pretty sure I couldn't hide from God in a bunker - but at least it was interesting, wasn't it? And can any of you actually tell me that you weren't just a little trepidatious as the clock ticked over from 11:59 to 12:00, and the year clicked over from 1999 to 2000? Those of you who were sober enough to remember it, anyways.

It's 8 years later now. 8 YEARS. Something like 1/10 of your life has passed by since then - if you're lucky. Do your old buddy Aaron a favor and look in the mirror tonight (before you get too drunk to do it without laughing). What's changed in those 8 years? Are you married? Do you have a career? Children? Do you have facial hair? Wrinkles? Look at the bags under your eyes, the stubble on your cheeks (or legs, ladies). Look at your sagging breasts and your crumpled dreams. Are you now where you believed you would be when the 20th century came to a close? Either you're not (and that's what I'm betting on), or you never really had any dreams to begin with.

But then, what use are dreams anyway? A dream is sort of a self-defeating prophecy, isn't it? I mean, you look at your life, find it wanting, and look into the future saying, "I'm not 100% happy now, but when I get X dollars, or X women, or to X city, job, or social level, I'll have climbed up several points on the fire escape of contentment, and I'll be more satisfied than I am now." Of course, this sort of person (shyly raising hand here) is never really satisfied with anything are they? And they see the present only as a stepladder towards a future that doesn't so closely resemble mediocrity. Pretty sad, isn't it? Either rot where you are, a sad bag of water and calcium, or trade your solace now for a future where you'll have more money, more prestige, more lovers, more toys, and still be nothing more than a sad bag of water and calcium.

Now, I could easily launch from here into a feel-good, motivational, after-school specialesque pep talk, where I tell you to appreciate the life you've been given, to stop and smell the flowers, and to hug your family, children, and neigbors (WARNING: If you live in America, do not hug your neighbors. You will be prosecuted.). But I'm not going to. Do you all really believe your Aaron has changed that much? No, no, no. I'm going to tell you the same thing I've always told you. Push. Bleed. Fight. Struggle. "For what?" you ask. "It's pointless. I should just make my rat hole as cozy as possible so I can be comfortable until time and gravity pull my ever expanding rolls of fat, and me along with them, into the ground."

You can spend your entire life traveling the world; you can meet lots of interesting people; you can learn every language, read every book, try every variation of Baskin and Robbins ice cream, but for what? You'll fill your synapses full of neurons that are far more interesting than what's happening in the latest season of Lost, but then your brain will fall apart, and you'll lose it all in the same way. The mind is not immune to time. Nihil de tempore fugare potest. I'll tell you why. Because that's LIVING.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean that you have to travel around like a homeless hippie. I mean that you have to ask questions (and look for the answers). You have to be curious. You have to giggle. You have to have beliefs that you won't abandon until you see that they are wrong. But you have to be willing to see that they are wrong (I'm looking at you, Christians). You have to follow your dreams, no matter how pointless they are in the grand scheme of things. You have to go to stupid lengths to stand up for your beliefs, and most importantly, you ALWAYS have to be able to say, "I did the best I could. And then, I found that I could do better than I believed." If you can say that, you'll usually find yourself immediately afterwards saying, "And I succeeded."

But here are the most important things:

Don't try to be an asshole, but don't be afraid to be an asshole either.

Only do your best when you're doing something important - but struggle to make sure that you're always doing something important.

Make yourself the most important person in your life.

And finally, you can give money to people who don't deserve it, but don't EVER give even one minute to someone unworthy of it. It's an insult to yourself, and that's the worst kind.

Oops, I got all didactic. Oh, well. You've probably stopped reading by now anyways. Allow me then to squeeze in a little bit of unimportant information about me and my meness. It's time to reflect on my rather extended stay here in Ye Olde Constantinople. What have I done with my last two and a half years? I took a little (er... really, really long) break from the road. I made some (er... a decent amount of) money. I got some experience in my career, in my life, in my language, and in my self. I'm a better person than I was when I got here. I now know the meaning of hospitality, and what it means to have a guest. I'm closer to understanding friendship. I'm nowhere near closer to understanding relationships, but that one's well beyond the greatest minds, if you ask me. I can cook marginally better, and I've learned how to laugh. For no reason at all. Most importantly, I've learned how to pull myself up from nothing into something - and that's the greatest thing you can ever do. I've learned how to land on my ass and spring right back up onto my feet.

Sometimes I feel like I've wasted the last couple of years of my life, but I guess when you look at it that way, I've grown more as a person in the last two years than I have in the rest of my entire life. And that's one thing that I, like most others, forget. We get too preoccupied with growing outwardly - physically, financially, socially - and we forget to grow inside.

So, what's my plan for 2008? Well, I've got one more week of work at ALTA left, until I'm totally free. I've still got several private students that I'll continue to work with, and in my free time, I'm going to be throwing myself into the corporate world. Soon, I'm going to start giving lessons at a couple of different companies, charging the big bucks. Basically, between Educit, my private lessons, and my corporate lessons, I'll be working like a dog, but at least I'll finally be working for myself, on my terms. Will that be as rewarding as it seems? Only one way to find out!

Again, I raise my glass to 2007 and drink to 2008, yet another year that brings us all closer to our deaths! Hayata!