And you ask me what I want this year

And I try to make this kind and clear

Just a chance that maybe we’ll find better days

Better Days, Goo Goo Dolls (2006)

Better Days suddenly played on my iPod tonight. I’ve forgotten that this song is part of my iTunes library. How serendipitous it seems, that this song is about starting a new year with better days ahead. 

New Year’s Eve (2011) is one of the most touching Hollywood films I have seen this year, and I don’t care what all those critics say. Undoubtedly, it helps that this film is brimming with all these attractive, award-winning actors and actresses (plus Bon Jovi), and it’s difficult to choose whose New Year’s Eve story is my favorite.

The movie reveals a beautiful thing about human existence: that we are all living in this world with our own unique stories, that we are helplessly different from each other, and this could be the reason why we fight, argue, make mistakes and let others down. 

However, on certain occasions,we have the ability to come together, to forget about differences, and realize that we could be somehow sharing similar things inside. It often happens in times of calamity, in moments of celebration and cheer, in concerts, in church, in periods of crisis and chaos. 

On new year’s eve, we all are filled with essentially the same hopes for the new year: the hope that in the next year, we could change to be better persons, that we could accomplish more, that we could be happier, that we could be more successful, that we could tread this crazy life with lesser trifles, with lesser worries.

And we all get to do these in our own unique ways.

We are all essentially the same, and yet so different. I still find this inexplicably incredible.

Together, let’s make this year better than the last.