A New Year... really?

I used to look forward to the clean, fresh slate of a new year. But lately days from the year before look much like the days to come. In reading The Social Animal by the great David Brooks (I mean what is there not to love about this brilliant, unassuming man!) I'm understanding that the human brain and our selves as individuals crave constant stimuli. Not just to form and reform new synapses but because our nature demands change. Which is probably why we can be revved up to high rage so easily by anyone's rant against government, banks, Europe, inhumanity to man, why we aren't sending rockets into space anymore... yeah, one can add just about anything to the list!! But our essence, as humans, as animals, is designed to take in input at astounding rates, according to scientists Brooks sites in his book. And our senses will reach out and snatch whatever data is out there.

So... in trying to create a New Year that does not meld into the last or the next, I am making it important to open my senses to the events, factoids and daily input of info around me that will carry positive, unique, imaginative and progressive stimuli to my amazing brain. After all, taking the cosmic view, today is less than a millisecond of time. A raging rant, a depressing doubt, an epiphanic event are so very fleeting. Yet they leave their mark on who one is at any miniscule moment in time. So turn your face with me to whatever is your current glowing, glorious sunspot; a child, a project, a date, a meal with loved ones, a conversation, an emotion... and never forget it will ink-blot you forever, for better or for worse. Happy 2012 to all.

And read "The Social Animal" by David Brooks. His words will reroute your synapses in aspiring, reaffirming and reassuring ways. I swear!