Dear 2017,
There's a general consensus that 2016 sucked. And the bad new keeps on rolling in; right before I started writing this I found out Carrie Fisher died. From the beginning of the year to the end, we’ve been wracked with celebrity deaths, unstable governments, rampant racism, questionable website policies, two political parties at each other’s throats, the end of reliable media, and, oh yeah, the death of a gorilla that some people still aren’t over.
For me personally, 2016 was a pretty good year. I finished my first year of college, completed my first job, earned two semesters of 4.0s, and got a cat. I ask you, how can I complain about that? Sure, everyone needs to have a personal look back at the year and have things they want to work on in the coming year and they can make all the New Year’s Resolutions they want. I’ve got some small things, but they’re more like New Year’s Goals. Everything I told myself I was going to do this year and didn’t just got shoved to next year, but it’s under the guise of being a fresh start. And that’s really what a new year is supposed to be, in theory.
We’ve got to believe in a fresh start, not just for us and our little individual problems but for the world in general. We have to look back on all that went wrong this past year and figure out what we can change individually. Decisions about who we trust, who we spend time with, and who we listen to might make everything a little clearer. The things we can’t control, like the celebrity deaths and how the higher-ups who control everything react, will be annoying and sad, like anything we can’t control. The inevitability of life is the worst. But we won’t think about that. Not yet. 2017 will be better than 2016. 2016 wasn’t rock bottom. There were a lot worse things that could have happened. But it wasn’t the greatest for our country and our world as a whole.
So, 2017, I’m challenging you. Don’t be the year the world ends. Don’t be the year of stupid stuff continuing, but rather be the year of fighting back and the year of change. Good change, or bad change. Any kind of change because that’s what the world needs. It’s going to be a good year. This will be the year people won’t be afraid to speak their minds, the year more people become aware of the little problems that are chipping away the good foundation of American culture, and the year we start moving towards a better future for our world by solving and talking about those problems. 2017 is going to be better than 2016, but only because we will make it so. There’s 365 days of it. Plenty of time to do something worthwhile.
Sincerely,
A mere mortal confined to this linear timeline and wants to make the best of it
