In high school, what cued the beginning of winter break was not the excessive amounts of holiday music that seemed to play everywhere or the exhaustion that came from staying up much too late studying for tests worth twenty percent of our grades but the scraping of chairs and the general movement of people (running and walking) out of the building as fast as possible. In college, I am discovering, nothing signals the end of a quarter but the sudden realization that 24 hour study sessions in the library are no longer necessary.
The transition into the New Year is much like this. For some, there is the annual ritual of chanting various numbers in large groups until an object is released. For others, there is a quiet solitary acknowledgement that time has passed. One creating a wide spread feeling of excitement and community and the other bringing comfort to one person. New Years is a collision of opposites, of contrasts, only to further outline the year that has passed.
This year has been, much like New Years itself, a demonstration of a flipping coin caught in continuous motion. Atrocious events have been carefully minted with an outpouring of love towards individual people, communities, and the world as a whole. Catastrophes such as the massacre of those in Aleppo have been paired with explicit insights into mental illness necessary to create tolerance for those who suffer with such afflictions. Bombing and terrorist attacks have splashed across the screens of a billion television viewers next to pieces of media that support and create awareness for cultures that have been too long overlooked.
This continuous motion only further underlines how the world has so many resolutions itself that it could make. From championing women's rights, or just human rights in general, to conferring on the best united front to take against ISIS, each new turn has created a new avenue to expand and smooth, to at least make an attempt at bettering the world for all those whom reside within it.
Flipping, continuously flipping, from good to bad, darkness to light. 2016 has been a year caught in the momentum of consistent turning. The question then to be posed with the end of the year is this: How has this affected you? The question then to be asked with the New Year is:
What are you going to do about it?
