Promise

First sunrise of 2010 in Chiba, Japan

Each of us wakes up to a January 1 every 365, to a fresh, crisp, crude beginning. In gradual one-hour time intervals, six billion souls go on hoping for a meaningful next few months. All emotional baggage are left to be thrown in the trash. The earth is new in our minds. We open our diaries and begin writing on the first page. The year is young once again.

On a book I was reading was the rhetorical question "What drives your life?". Questions like those are rhetorical in nature but definitely demand an answer. You can't help thinking about such.

My life is driven by the promise of the future. Tomorrow, next month, the next time I'll see my family, the day I'll graduate from college, and the many more things that mean something to me. Before I sleep I think about the things I look forward to, as if I were giving myself reasons to wake up. And it's amazing how those things never run out. Perhaps it's the promise of youth, maybe it's the hope that things will get better.

The future is a double-edged sword. That promise of more time can either make you worry or hope.

I don't know what waits for me in 2011. I just know that good things never run out. For everyone. For sure.

Photo taken by Luke Granada.