We’ve reached a point where the best news I’ve heard this year is that it’s almost over.

2016 wasn’t at all close to the cotton candy, soft and fairy-like dream world of acceptance and equality that its radical Pantone colors (Serenity and Rose Quartz) suggested. Forget the killer clowns and dead gorillas, one of the scariest things about this year is how it set up a foundation of conflict and anger for the next one.

With 2017, I’m not asking for much— just don’t be as awful as 2016, and maybe have just one less dead rockstar, please?

Pantone itself seems to feel the same way with how many “re” words they’ve sprinkled into their Color of the Year press releases: Greenery, a “fresh and zest yellow-green,” is meant to revive, restore, renew, rejuvenate, revitalize. Maybe even remind people to recycle, which is disturbingly relevant now that we have a president-elect who calls climate change a Chinese hoax.

Is that connection too facile, too easy? Maybe, but the psychology of colors has never been subtle. The leaf green reminds me of spring and rebirth and all the other classic symbols you talked about in high school English classes. It also reminds me of how my mom would tell me to look at something green to give my eyes a break from staring at the computer screen all day (I should’ve listened to her.)

And that takes me back to summers spent in the forests of Taiwan with my family. We would drive up the winding roads, sticking so close to the mountainside that ferns and branches would tap against the window, flanked by a steep drop on the other side. The air there is so thin in oxygen and thick with water, a heavy blanket surrounding the lush forest, where everything is misty and green, and the sunlight reaches the ground only in thin, golden slices.

Greenery reminds me of catching frogs with my cousins in the heat of those kinds of summers, and of eating guacamole and nachos with my best friend after school during senior year, when we’d talk about our futures and our dreams and watch cars drive by in the rain.

I’m just as-- and maybe even more so-- concerned for the future now, at the end and crux of this orbit around the sun. 2017 is the year I turn 20, I finally learn how to drive, I apply to dental school, and I want to be grounded and hopeful and lively for all of those things. I should also take better care of the little cactus that serves as my roommate. I'll surround myself with Greenery and greenery if it'll help me stay positive, the way a quiet morning spent in a forest or a big plate of nachos can.

And maybe 2017 won’t be so bad. Maybe it’ll grow on you.