2010. Twenty ten. Two thousand and ten. Crazy. I am somewhere between intense interest in the new year, and apathy—it’s just another day, after all. As a student, I tend to think in school terms, anyway: “Did that happen sophomore or junior year? What teacher did we have then?” So the change from one calendar year to the next has never had much significance.

But something feels different now. Maybe it’s the fact that I have indeed been alive for two whole decades and that my quarter-life crisis is impending—instead of looking over my life so far and thinking “where has it gone? What have I done?” (i.e. mid-life crisis) I am approaching questions like “Where will I go? What will I do?” Unanswerable questions, indeed. I know I am not alone in asking them, but that knowledge does not always help—(“Ok cool, your ship is sinking too? Well, I guess we’ll drown together! Hooray!”)

And then of course, there the resolutions. One might be to actually become resolved. About something. Anything. There’s a good start.

I think another would be to notice life more. To wake up and smell the beauty. To taste how extraordinary this world, this Love, this life can really be. I think this is something I have lost of late. I used to be freakin fantabulous at breathing praise in my soul, of acknowledging God, even if only in my spirit (my stupid fear of turning God into a cliché often gets in my way.) Since reading some of Donald Miller’s new book, I realize that I have stopped noticing it all—

“What I’m saying is I think life is staggering and we’re just used to it. We are all like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we’re given—it’s just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral...If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you. “

So, resolution: to notice the beauty of every day, every person, of the mysterious God that made all of this.

Another one would be—to listen more to His voice. Whatever that means. The mystery and of this concept slips through my fingers so often, though I know I have experienced it before. Maybe this is supposed to start small, with the nudging that we sometimes call our conscience, and then moving forward with that. And maybe it’s more than that. Again, Donald Miller affected this resolution:

“I believe there is a writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, and whispering a better story into our consciousness...I realized the Voice, the Writer who was not me, was trying to make a better story, a more meaningful series of experiences I could live through.”

By listening better, perhaps I can live better. What a concept…

While these resolutions have no way to be counted or really attainable, somehow they seem more optimistic than “get better grades” (though that would be nice), “lose 10 pounds” (though that would definitely be nice) or “save x amount of money” (which is probably needed. I hate money.)

In some way or another, my resolutions encompass the UBC benediction, “love God, embrace beauty, and live life to the fullest.”

Maybe I’ll say those words with greater resolve every week.

Also, I need to drink less coffee. And blog more.

(So much for resolutions…)