The New Year

I guess something should be said about the change into the new year. A hurrah for the accomplishments for 2009, or a bold and courageous look towards 2010. Indeed, 2009 was eventful with a marriage of a sister, a deeper plunge into academia, improvements vocally, many social adventures.

But this year rang in with little significance. As age moves onward, the years have begun to blend softly into one another; Simply a progression of life. We were here yesterday and are still here today.

Before you think this is some hum-drum perspective on life, let me lighten the room. The slow progression yet swift turn of events in what we call "life" has begun to fascinate me more each day.

I refrain from boasting of everyday events on this blog, but try to introduce my perspective, original or not. The more education I shove down my throat, the more I realize there is rarely an original thought, speech or action. Thousands of books have been written over thousands of years, and even more hundreds of thousands in the past 100 years, of people's discoveries of life, habits and feelings, science and technology. I bought a clutch bag from a vintage store, and the more I used it, the more I fell in love with it. One day while riding in the car with a friend and fiddling with the outer layer, the layer popped off. I was horrified. The one of a kind purse was broken! Upon further inspection the purse turned out to have snaps on the outer layer making that layer removable or reversible. If you have been in any mall, you will be familiar with the square purses that have magnets in their lining so you may change the design and formality of your purse in seconds. Original? Obviously not, according to my little clutch.

My fascination in life has become the amount of knowledge there is possibly to be obtained. In the library on campus is ~61 miles of books. Sixty-one miles. In one university library. That's nearly 3 million volumes. If you read one book a day, in 80 years you will read 29,300. You would have to live ~102.3 life-times to read just what is in this one library.

Whoa.

So far in my college career I have taken classes on film, sociology, psychology, algebra, statistics, history, language, linguistics, theater, dance, music, singing, astronomy, teaching, writing, geology. Even though 4 months was spent learning about each subject, the classes were introductory - barely scratching the surface of what is available to the human race.

Whoa.

Yes, I feel quite worthless in my own little world. Yet the clock still turns, age still progresses, and happiness lives on. We breathe. We eat. We laugh. We cry. And time moves on.

Happy New Year.