My New Year’s resolutions have always been fairly typical.

“I want to exercise more.

I want to maintain a good GPA.

I want to become more skilled at __________.”

This year, I want to try something new.

The phrase, “Live every day as if it were your last” never resonated with me.

Whenever I hear that saying, I think about how, if I lived by that philosophy, I’d spend the first half of the day planning out how to make the second half of the day perfect, and, during the second half of the day, I’d be too anxious and depressed to enjoy the events that I’d planned.

Also, I would never clean anything ever. I would not spend my last day on earth scrubbing a sink.

But changing “it” to “this year,” makes the phrase, “live every day as if it were your last,” more applicable to my everyday life.

If I had only a year left, my days would stay the same for the most part (albeit, I would be calling my parents more frequently).

I would still read and paint and spend time with my friends about as often as I currently do.

Maybe I’d go to Italy, but that wouldn’t be my top priority.

I wouldn’t go out of my way to go bungee-jumping or skydiving. I can’t imagine myself saying that I had a more fulfilling life because I did either of those things.

In all honesty, I don’t think it’s the places you go or the number of things you do that determine whether or not you’ve lived a fulfilling life.

It’s the way you reflect on those experiences and use them as tools to shape yourself.

The other day I was reading an article about how one trait that marks moral exemplars as distinct is the way in which they recount their lives. When they tell personal stories, those stories generally have redemptive sequences, in which negative events have positive endings. Moral exemplars choose to see their lives as redemptive, regardless of what happens to them, and that’s one way in which their lives are especially meaningful.

If I only had a year left, I wouldn’t have time to leave behind a legacy or accumulate lots of money.

I would have to come to the realization that all that I have is all I will have, and all of that is enough.

I think the world would be a happier place if we always saw ourselves as enough.

Not always the prettiest, but pretty enough.

Not always the smartest, but smart enough.

Continuing to improve, but always knowing that all that we have and all that we are, is enough.

Because, for most of us, it is.

This year, my resolution is to appreciate the world in all that it is, as if this was the only year I had left.

Every day I visit the beach and even though it always has the same name, it’s always a different beach. Every day there is a new sunset. The clouds migrate, the tide moves up and down, the birds come and go. Every day I’m full of new thoughts and feelings that alter the way I see the world.

If I only had a year left, I would still spend it walking down this beach, but I would appreciate the wind, the sand, and the sky in a different way.

You know,

It’s the way you feel when you’re about to move out of a place you’ve lived in for years,

When you begin to notice all the little parts of the house that you’ll miss.

I walk along the beach, and even though I don’t know what comes after death, I think,

I will miss this wind. I will miss this sand. I will miss seeing these seagulls that fly over the cliffs,

And I appreciate those things in the way they deserve to be appreciated.

As if I were seeing it all for the last time.

And the opinions of other people?

If I only had a year left,

Those opinions wouldn’t matter so much.

I would tell my friends and family how much I care about them,

I would be posting what I wanted to post on Instagram (whenever I wanted to),

And I would be doing my best to leave this world a better and more beautiful place than it was in the year before I left it.