TAPESTRY! I apologize. But I'm here. My mom told me once that I'm a late-bloomer. She told me this partly to comfort me on behalf of the Victoria's Secret employee's comment that "things do change for 32A's," and partly on behalf of my consistent negligence of things I really should be doing. I think I'm just perpetually late and maybe a little lazy.
Anyway, last day of this year I'm running up the horribly steep hill of my neighborhood, my stomach full of guacamole, and I can't stop writing in my head. I do this thing when I think of the most amazing topics to write about (ok not necessary amazing-they are just topics I WANT to write about), and they come to my mind-but I'm just so lazy that I think "oh I'll def remember that" and shlosh the idea into the back shed of my skull.
Too bad I am always so late-because I'm constantly catching up to these ideas to stop them from running past, or worse, away from me. So here I am on the last day I can call this a life in 2014-and I'm feeling like I've let so many great words slip through my fingers.
Don't get me wrong-this has been a year of great successes for the world and myself alike. However, how many times do we really hold time cupped in our palms and treat it like a precious thing?
Years, like pennies, are taken for granted. We celebrate when they are new and shiny, and look to what new splendids they can afford us. But as years plink on, their surfaces becomes tarnished by disappointment, pressure, our environment, and stress. By the 31st, everyone has posts on their Twitter feeds exclaiming what a $#!? year it's been, and we toss our years into our change purses, clasp them closed, and thank ourselves for the new copper that's replaced a greeny-brown reality. I believe this mentality is mainly because we can't seem to remember what we ever wanted in the first place.
Most of 2014's qualities will carry into the new year. The same giggling girls in tube tops will cover Instagram with their shiny smiles that we will like, parents will act relieved to hear we're at least thinking of college, and men will continue to be thanked for holding doors for women. Take-out will always be fifteen minutes of crucial waiting, and we will all still have an unexplained inkling for driving to loud music at nighttime.
My parents told me that on New Year's Eve 1999 everyone was afraid. They thought the computers wouldn't know how to transfer into the new millennium, and life as people knew it would cease to exist. But midnight came and went, and the Earth was untouched by the moment. Life is life, and that is the truth that transcends all generations of time. Sure new music will arrive, new people, new experiences, and new fears, but the constants of life, the way people are people, the expectations for a more wholesome humanity, and the pennies upon which we rely will definitely remain. The notion of reinventing a newer, more satisfying life in 2015 seems romantic, but you cannot change yourself in the stroke of a minute, or the course of a year.
Instead of attempting to replace 2014 with 2015, I suppose I'm asking whoever reads this to count their pennies. Your years are passing, and no great material wealth can slow that fact. Time is an invaluable element of growing up, and I thank the sun and moon for their tireless rebirthing of night and day.
Open up that change purse, and feel the coins you've stored away. Feel their rust and remember how it got there. Pennies, like years, are building blocks. They add together to create a vast sum of worth that define the greater plot line of life. Without years, we would not have our lives as we know them. Keep those pennies in your heart, and you will have captured all of time's greatest riches.
A Healthy and Happy New Year to All,
Nicole Fallert
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