My New Year did not start with joyous laughter and enthusiastic hugs or confetti, but instead the horror of my precipice entertainment disappearing like dust as if Thanos snapped it out of existence. As if it were disposable with no meaning, Mad Max was taken off of HBO Max right at the beginning of the new year, also known as the movie I watched while waiting for the ball to drop. 

This, of course, is honestly frustrating, not only HBO Max but many other sites had also purged films and TV shows when the month of January started up. This did get me thinking, about time passing, change and growth. Here’s a fact no one person really considers New Year’s just marks another year that humanity has miraculously survived in this harsh universe. 

I do not think New Year’s qualifies as a day of celebration; and here’s why I think that. 

Time passes for us people like everything else in this universe. Time plays in a limit for at least our physical form and thus we await the day we hit the top of said gage. Our bodies grow and mature as does our mind. In fact, I almost think the same about birthdays. However, birthdays mark a point in time of a single existence rather than all. 

That there is what I would rather focus on: personal growth and experience. Days on which people achieve big goals or finally overcome obstacles that stand in their way. These are the things I think matter more. Get this: every holiday is specified by an event or collection of days that have happened in history besides New Year’s. 

Christmas is the birth of Christ, Thanksgiving is the union of Pilgrims and Native Americans, Independence Day marks the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Día de Los Muertos is the Mexican people celebrating the death of their relatives, and even Halloween with origins from an ancient Celtic festival. A birthday marks the first day of a child’s existence outside of a mother, recognized as a person to the whole of the earth. 

And what about New Year’s? 

The exact point of earth completing a cycle around the bright blazing amalgamation of gas and space elements we call the sun. Tell me when were we ever celebrating this point in existence until scientists told humanity we were making rounds around a star in the middle of the galaxy? 

Yet now here, fireworks and confetti, flashing lights, and sparkling champagne in tall glass cups. A night of no sleep just to reset the clocks and pull out the brand new calendar for the real year. 

People don’t grow between 11:59 to 12:00 in the new year. It is a single second, a blink of an eye, and a breath that counts as nothing in the grand scheme of things. 

Maybe I’m one who does not care about time passing, and I would rather sleep through the night and wake up ready to start the day with passion and readiness. No change, but slow strength that is not defined by time but by experience. 

My only hope would be that we as humanity avoid focusing on lasting, and tries instead to impact what we have left. We don’t know time’s true limit, so enjoy the now and stop reaching for the end. 

One can only do so much.