Dying inside, and hello, 2009.

1. I once read in a book somewhere that people cannot claim to know other people as they are, at any present moment.

It is because that body cells are always dying, replaced regularly by new cells. At any given time, a person is instantaneously shedding their former identity and is being born into a new one even while they talk to you about the most trivial of things. Thus, the person you knew at 10:31 am is not the same person, biologically speaking, as the one you have spoken to in the following evening.

Almost everything you've known about that person no longer holds as fact, but memories of the person who died shortly after 10:31 am, to be replaced by another one who thinks, acts, and feels like their predecessor.

That said, there's no need to write "I want to become a new person" in your New Year's Resolution list. It's a fact of life; you constantly die only to be reborn all the time, every so often. It's just a matter of not acting/thinking/feeling like the same guy who died inside you a few hours ago, whom you, as you are right now, have replaced.

Perhaps a better item to add to your New Year's Resolution list should say something along the lines of "I will be that person who I was on December 21, 2008, 10:31 am, when I was actually productive, when I didn't complain as much, when I actually felt good about myself, and remained non-judgmental."

It's interesting, the things that realizes when thinking on different perspectives.

2. I wonder how different this coming year would be; I've stopped adapting a brighter outlook every turn of the year, because I've realized that I can do it every day. In the same token I'm (still struggling to) fight off the temptation of being pessimistic every once in a while, because I'll never know when things will turn up for me, whatever fuck ups I've committed.

What do you have in store for me, 2009?