exitus

It's the last day of April, and for me, the last day of the semester.  Hallelujah.

Everywhere I turn, people are packing up and moving out. Finishing classes, saying goodbyes, graduating, moving on to different things...
The world is abundant with endings today.
And as humans, we tend not to like endings.  In general, we think they're sad.
Except for endings like strenuous runs or hard classes, which are victorious.

But here's a little secret about endings.  We need them.

We need finish lines and goals and even the goodbyes.  Without them, we would accomplish much less, under-appreciate most things, and sell ourselves short in almost every way.  And life, even though it goes on, would lose much of its savor.

Endings push us beyond the limits we put for ourselves.  One excellent example is the story of Florence Chadwick, a brilliant swimmer who enjoyed pushing the limits.  She swam the English Channel both ways, and had decided to do a long-distance swim along the coastline of California.  It was a foggy day, and she swam for hours despite barely being able to see the support boats alongside her.  After fifteen exhausting hours, she finally relented to the chilly water and her aching muscles, and asked to be pulled into the boats.  They continued to land and discovered that Florence had swum all but half a mile of her intended distance.  Upon learning this, she said, "All I could see was the fog.  I think if I could have seen the shore, I would have made it."



Setting a goal and seeing the finish line helps us to dig deeper within ourselves and push through the tiredness, the aches and pains, and whatever else comes our way.  Going on an endless swim into the ocean, we're more likely to sell ourselves short and stop before we realize how close we are to achieving our goals.

The other opportunity that endings afford us is a moment to reflect back on what we've done and who we've become.  It's usually the most natural time for people to say things they should have been saying all along: "Thank you for being a good friend," "I'm glad to have you in my life," "You are a quality human being and I hope you have a wonderful life."  You know, those things that your friends might write in a yearbook, given they actually know you and are sincere about the things they write in yearbooks.  Without the goodbyes we have to say, I fear we would take a lot more relationships for granted.  We would fail to express our appreciation and respect for each other like we should.  Our relationships would be much less fulfilling on the whole if we never had to face the reality of saying goodbye.

When we realize that endings come and at some point, we must all be left, or leave ourselves, I think we gain a better understanding of how valuable the present moment is.  We tend to spend our time better, realizing that it will come to an end.  We won't always be at this place, with these people, doing these things.  We'll have to move on some day.  And turns out, that day is rapidly approaching.

So as much as we must seize the day, I find that we must also embrace the endings.

spes [hope]

Welcome to the last day of 2014!

Did y'all realize that today is the last day?  Like...after this there is no more 2014.  All gone.

So, hopefully we can all look back on that over-optimistic list of new year's resolutions we made last year and say that we satisfactorily accomplished all of them.
I hope that that's most of what happens to people, rather than just completely forgetting about them.
Either way, there is a surprising lack of people spending their last hours of the year hurriedly losing weight, reading things, being kinder to others, and achieving their dreams.
Seriously, I do wonder why new year's eve is a "drop everything an celebrate" experience rather than a "hurry and cram, finals-style".  After all, it is the last day of 2014...
We're either too irresponsible for that, or too hopeful for the future, choosing to look forward to the dawn of a second chance, rather than mourn over the missed opportunities and forgotten intentions of the past.  With our sincere desire to change, the wasted time and mistakes of the past seem to erase themselves.

So kudos to the humans for maintaining a hope for the future and for working to continually improve themselves.

And while you're out there partying tonight and neglecting your unfinished business from 2014, do it in a hopeful rather than irresponsible manner, and be grateful for the second chance you are given with the great dawn of a new year.

diem

Now that we've all made it through New Year's celebrations and the ensuing hangovers (whether alcohol-induced, sugar overload, just general lack of sleep, or otherwise), I must ask: Was it really worth it?

We endure all this partying and hooplah and stressful preparations and issues finding a date (or at least someone to grab and kiss at midnight) and then trying to get home safely...just to welcome in the new year.

And I'm sure the majority of you kindof failed at actually welcoming the new year. What did you do on the first day of the new year? The day that was so important to you only two days ago? Sleep in, recover, spend hours on the internet posting "happy new year" on various social networks, eat some junk food, watch some television...
I must say that I am not exempt from having wasted my first day of the new year. I barely treated it like anything special, even though society continues to insist that it is something special.

Frankly, it's actually rather arbitrary. Who's to say where one year ends and another begins?  Life is more continuous than that.  Why do we celebrate a new year on January first as opposed to February first?  Or maybe the first day of spring?

Unfortunately, a lot of things in life feel arbitrary.  High school graduation, for example, is merely one's success at jumping through all sorts of silly hoops and following the law for twelve or thirteen years. (It is, after all, illegal to not be in school.)  Getting a degree is a series of further hoops to jump through.  Many holidays, although rooted in tradition and rituals, are now foolish and arbitrary.  Valentine's day. April Fool's. Saint Patrick's. Halloween.
The only reason any of these days are different from the day before or the day after is because of the meanings we as societies assign to them.

In spite of the arbitrary nature of the day, and among all the things that a new year means to us are some of the better things to celebrate. It's a humanistic holiday. There is hope for the coming year that it will be better.  Intent to improve our lives and become better versions of ourselves. Reflection on all we've learned from the past year, everything we've done and everything we've made it through. Moving onward and upward personally, emotionally, socially, and intellectually, both as individuals and together.

So maybe next year don't focus as much on all the partying, the late-night shenanigans, the  ball dropping, the parades, and the countdowns.  Take just a minute to think about what the new year means most to you. What will you hope for? What will you make happen? What have you learned from the past? What will you change, and what will you keep? 
And perhaps the most important: What is that better version of yourself?  What will you become?

And then take that first step and seize the first day of that new year. Don't let it just slide by like nothing important needs to be done.

And don't worry, you can still start this year off.  Take advantage of Now.

pars

So, it's New Year's Day.  Happy 2013!

Something you may not know is that the number 2013 has three prime factors: 3,11, and 61.

So my 2013 is going to have three prime factors as well. This is one of the few posts that I'll be talking pretty much exclusively about myself. :P Not super enjoyable (for either of us, I think) but I think appropriate.

Prime Factors of 2013:

1) New people.
Meeting new people is always a good thing. Right now I have so many opportunities to get to know people from different places and lives that have something in common with me, whether that's my education, my sports interests, music...
I want to reach out and see more of the world through other people.
I also want to be able to do more to help the people I meet. Never let an opportunity for service pass you by.
2) Religion.
I want to deepen my understanding of my own religion but also of other religions worldwide. I want to be religiously tolerant and understanding. I want to know where people are coming from in their beliefs and customs. 
3) More reading.
You can never be too well-read.  And there are hundreds of books that I've been wanting to read and have never gotten around to, as well as books that I think I need to reread.  Not to mention books (and articles and websites and any other literature) about things I want to learn about.  Even though I'm attending university right now, I'm tragically limited to only 18 credits or so, so if I want to learn about everything that I want to learn about, I must read furiously.

So there you have it.  I think this should be manageable for 2013, to remember three big things to focus on.  (Much better than, say, 2012, which has prime factors of 2, 2, 2, 2, 503, and 2.)

What are your prime factors of 2013 going to be?

titulari

As I'm sure you all know, the year is now drawing to a close, and many people like to reflect on the year past.  For Lionel Messi, that includes a record-breaking 91 goals in a calendar year.

 

The record that he broke, though, is also worth reflection. It was previously held by German forward Gerhard "Gerd" Müller, who in 1972 scored 85 goals.  That's right, his record stood for 40 years.

Messi's 91 goals were scored over 69 games, and if you're a Messi fanatic, here's a great website worshipping his accomplishments this year. It has plenty of graphs :)

Müller's 85 goals were scored over 60 games, and if you do the math, Müller, aka "Der Bomber" averaged more goals per game than Messi.  Müller is currently ranked tenth on the list of all-time international goalscorers, despite playing fewer career matches than any player featured in the top 25. He began his professional football career at the age of 18 in 1964. Müller quickly established his value as a striker and made huge appearances in the World Cup, scoring 10 goals in the 1970 games (earning him a Golden Boot*), and scoring the winning goal against Holland to see West Germany take the 1974 Cup.  In these two World Cup appearances, Müller scored a total of 14 goals, setting a record that would not be broken for 32 years.

Müller, far left, all old school and classy. He enjoyed wearing the number 13.

Just to put this in perspective, many records are broken fairly often.  Watch the Olympic Games and you'll see a new record being made in almost every race (track and swimming, for example).  So for a record to stand so far beyond anyone else's reach for 40 years, the person who set that bar is certainly the stuff of legend.

Müller, sometimes teasingly called "short fat Müller" by his earlier coaches and teammates still holds several national and league records, as well as the international record of 66 goals in 74 European Club games.  

And who knows whether Messi will challenge any more of Der Bomber's records.  Messi still has quite a career ahead of him.  Gerd Müller himself congratulated Messi on breaking the record this December, and commented that the Argentine's only fault as a footballer is that he doesn't play for Bayern Munich.

(Hallo to all my German readers...interestingly, I do have a fair number of pageviews from Germany. :D)

*For any soccer illiterates here, the Golden Boot award goes to the World Cup player who has scored the most goals in the tournament.  The last couple awards have gone to players who have scored only 5 goals, and the average number of goals scored by a Golden Boot player is 7.