Your New Years Resolution Is Selfish
This year commit to something bigger than yourself
I hear a lot of people complaining about 2016 claiming the frequency of tragic public events is higher than previous years.
People are saying things like:
“Can this year be over already?”
“I’m so over 2016 already.”
“F&$& you 2016.”
Believing that the year is cursed is easy and it is a very catchy narrative to perpetuate.
But 2016 wasn’t cursed.
Tragic events happen every year. It’s just our perception of the events that has changed.
A genocide started in Darfur back in 2003, but it was my first year of college and I was more interested in the parties happening in the freshmen dorms.
In 2009, Michael Jackson, who was a star from my childhood, died. I shrugged it off because at the time, I working hard to hit a sales quota and make a name for myself.
A massive earthquake devastated Haiti just six years ago. I knew about it but, if I’m being honest, I thought that someone else should do something to help those people.
Just the other day, I was watching my one-year-old playing in the living room and realized something.
I was born in the early 80’s — that technically makes me a millennial. I’m not sure if it’s the naivety of youth or an exemplification of the millennial stereotype, but for the longest time I had an irrational sense of immortality.
Watching my daughter, I realized that I am getting older.
I’ve always felt a sense of responsibility to my little corner of the world but my daughter taught me the selfishness of this thinking. Every day we, the millennial generation, get older and become more responsible for both the good and bad things that happen in the whole world. Not just our small corners of it.
So as the clock winds down on 2016, we all need to take a moment and think about the world we want to live in.
We shouldn’t make selfish “New Year’s resolutions” for 2017.
Instead, we should commit to changing our perception. We should commit to shouldering the burden of making the world a better place for our children and generations to come. We should commit to making this year the year we get involved, volunteer our time, or donate our money to causes we care about.
We can’t depend on older generations anymore. It’s our time.
