As we enter 2017, I think we all can agree we are due for some changes. No matter which way you voted, what policies you stand for, what nationality or religion you support — we are entering a new year with a nation more divided than ever.

The Divided States of America. United we do not stand.

I am consistently finding myself wondering what positive changes can be made. How might my daily actions help a world so sorely in need? And if you, the world, are anything like my Facebook friends, you are wondering the same.

This isn’t a life-changing story or even one with a moral, but it’s something that’s been on my mind lately, begging to be shared.

Hear me out: I have an idea.

It goes like this: change the world around you and the world around you changes. Think of it like a pebble in a very still pond. You are the pebble, your waves radiate around you in rings, getting larger and larger as they go. Alone, those ripples might seem insignificant. But multiply by a million, and the water moves. Change happens.

This millennial generation, of which I am a part, is one of the most inspired to date. We have access to endless resources and information, and are passionate about improving the world we live in. We know the taste of forward progress towards equality and justice and recognize that moving backward would be unthinkable.

We, as the quickly rising workforce, also hold the most power for change.

I will admit, I frequently get overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all. But that’s why I’m embarking on this mission. After all, we each only have power over those around us. Unless you are the next MLK or Mother Teresa (in which case, show yourself please!), your opportunity for impact will be limited to your circle. Make as many ripples on the water as possible. Surround yourself with good people. Challenge the status quo and the prejudices of your loved ones. Kindly explain problems that others may not see. So much of bigotry is, unfortunately, inherent. Shine a light on it and inspire others to do the same. Expand your network beyond those who share your beliefs. Perhaps you too will learn something! The worst thing we can do is to shelter ourselves and do nothing. Don’t let the fear of failure keep you from playing the game.

So let’s get started! Big things start small. They start with us.

This is my resolution for the New Year. And hopefully for all the years that follow.

New Year’s resolutions have always baffled me. You always hear the same things—exercise more, eat better, learn something new, travel more, and stress less. While we all want better health, to be in the know, and to experience the world, creating these broad and generic resolutions often lead to lack of follow through. That’s the running joke, isn’t it? When the “new year, new you” only lasts for a week or so. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

All of our resolutions are made with good intentions and goals in mind, but what they lack is personalization and tangible action steps to make them happen. I’ve realized this year after year as I fail to achieve what I set out for, yet I have never tried to change that. Until now.

I’ve never truly made an effort to create resolutions that I stick to for more than a week or so, but this year felt different. I recently read an incredible book, “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin, and it rocked my world. It transformed the way I looked at goal setting and goal achieving. The premise of the book is that anyone can find happiness with the cards they’re played.

You don’t need an “Eat, Pray, Love” experience across the globe to find happiness and success. Instead, you can start where you are.

Rubin set out 12 resolutions for herself, one for each month, with tangible and specific ways to make every single resolution a reality. As I flipped page by page through the book, I realized how Rubin had created an approachable way to accomplishing those daunting resolutions. For example, instead of just “cultivating friendships”, it became remembering birthdays, no gossiping, cutting people slack, and bringing people together. What she did was break down her big hairy audacious goal, which seemed intimidating, into doable tasks and actions that she could focus on every day. As simple as this may seem, it opened my eyes.

So then the new year rolled around, sneaked up on me as it always does, and I knew I wanted to actually make something out of my resolutions. I looked to see what I needed to do to be more fulfilled, happy, and confident in 2017. As I developed my list, I realized that each one had a story behind it and that’s what made them more meaningful and more approachable, than say the typical “Eat healthier” resolution. I felt a deeper connection to my new resolutions and felt a drive to achieve them that I’d never felt before. It was the stories and the people that inspired them and brought them to life. It is those same stories and people that will serve as reminders throughout 2017 why I am doing what I am doing.

For the first time in my life, I am going to take my resolutions seriously and not just brush it off my shoulder if I don’t follow through. I’m hoping that this year will serve as a foundation for me in the future to help to learn how to create a goal and actually make it happen.

So bring it on 2017, I’m ready.

Typically, as the holiday season approaches, many people’s first thought is “oh crap, relatives.” Aunts and Uncles fill your home as well as distant relatives whose name you can’t quite remember.  You cook, eat, clean, sleep, repeat until your pants fit a little bit tighter and your nerves wear thin of Uncle Rob’s political opinions. 

And then the day comes.  Santa and his reindeer have come and gone leaving gifts behind for good girls and boys.  Before you know it, in the midst of all the Christmas cheer, time gets away from you and the holiday is over bringing in the new year.  And with the new year comes new resolutions.

People say they are going to go to the gym more, eat healthier, be smarter with money, and a whole lot of other things that they hope they can accomplish to improve their lives. This year, I have a one resolution I hope to stick to moving into 2017.  That resolution is to remember the people who impacted me the most, and one person in particular comes to mind.

This person is someone I have known for a very long time.  Someone who helped raise me, loved me as her own.  Someone who lived a hard life but never let the challenges defeat her.

Someone who I honestly have to say may be the closest thing to an angel I have ever met.

Let’s start out with her story.  I remember the day she told me how she came to live in America.  I was on the playset in her backyard on the swings, my favorite.  I loved how it felt when I flew through the hair, weightless, seeing how high I could go if I just swung my legs a little harder.  She walked into the backyard and started swinging with me.  We talked about random things for a little bit until I asked her about her childhood.

She came from a place filled with civil unrest.  Her childhood was not easy.  I remember her telling me one time as a little girl she was at school playing outside for recess.  She was with her friends running and laughing, until she fell down a hill beside the playground.  She got up, brushed herself off, and walked back up the hill.  What she found when she got to the top of the hill shocked me.  Her school had been blown up.  She never told me if there were survivors, or what happened after that.

She then began to tell me there was a point in time in her life where she had to leave her home to find safety.  She would travel from different locations, stopping at houses looking for food.  Kind strangers would give her something to eat, but would tell her she could not take anything with her.  This was because soldiers would attack the homes of the people that helped this innocent girl just try to survive.  She then told me they would dig holes to sleep for just a moment when traveling, because if they stayed too long, soldiers would throw bombs in their burrows to kill them.

Can you even imagine that?  Not knowing where you next meal will come from?  Not knowing if you’ll even wake up the when you close your eyes because you may be killed? I certainly cannot.

What I mentioned are just a few of the things she went through.  Yet she is still one of the kindest people I have ever known.  She didn’t let the struggles she faced harden her heart.

She has four children, three of which she adopted.  She took these children in because their parents were killed or they didn’t have a home.  I can remember her telling me should would tell her husband not to go into the back bedroom because she had found and taken in another child.  Through all of her own pain and suffering, she had so much love to give.  She wanted to help these children escape a life on the run as she once had.  Give them something more than shelter, give them a home.

I can remember her or her husband picking me up from school every day when I was a little girl.  And every day I was just as excited as the day before to go over and play.  I walked out the back of my elementary school across the playground and walked up smiling to great either of them.  Then one day she became very sick.  So sick they had to put a halo on her.

If you don’t know what a halo is, it’s not the kind you think an angel wears.

Imagine a back brace with two metal rods that stick up straight into the air in the front and in the back.  Those four rods are then screwed into the skill and secured with a metal circle around the top.  I know this sounds confusing, painful, and scary, and it was.  It pained me so much to see her like that, someone I loved so much suffering when she’s been nothing but kind and loving.

There was a period of time where she thought she may not live.  When my mom sat me down to tell me the news I was heartbroken.  I couldn’t imagine not seeing her almost every day.  I remembered she let my sister and I, who she also babysat, pick out jewelry in case she did pass.  She wanted us to have something to remember her by.  I have a necklace that I still wear to this day and cherish.  It is a simple gold necklace with a single jade bead.  Whenever I wear it I feel as though I’m taken back through time.  That same little girl sitting with her having tea parties, playing board games, and swinging on that swing set.

Thank God she survived and is still with us today.  I cannot imagine having grown up without her influence.  She is someone who never got angry in times would most people would become upset.  She always carried herself with grace.  She is someone who has survived more than I ever have or most likely will.  In times when I am quick to anger or think life is unfair, I try to remember that things can always be worse, and people go through the same struggles or much worse every day and still choose to be kind, loving, and hopeful.  That is what she always is.

I always find it ironic when she got sick that she had to wear a halo.  She never complained about the pain or the fact she may not live.  She still played with me, just a little girl, not understanding the magnitude of the situation.  She still made time for me in her life when her time could have been short.  She loved me as her own and that is something I will always treasure.  She suffered so much, but never let is phase her.  As they say, James Russell Lowell once said, “all angels come to us disguised” and I truly believe she is an angel to this day.

(Written by Rebecca Rosen)

It’s January, that lovely time of year where it seems everyone you know and love (or maybe just know) is setting goals for themselves for the new year; do more, eat less, that sort of thing. There is an overwhelming pressure to somehow be better regardless of how bad or good you thought you were in the past year. I love New Years, don’t get me wrong but the pressure, the pressure is what kills it for me.

It’s a general convention that people do much of their growing during their years at university; college is the place where people really “discover themselves” and “find their purpose.”

But what about those of us who have found ourselves already? I am not the type of person who constantly tries to reinvent myself. In fact for a very long time I was a creature of habit and to stray from that habit would be the worst thing in the history of the universe, ever.

In high school I decided to leave my comfort zone, do things for me, develop interests outside of the ones I had figured would characterize me for the rest of eternity. I learned some very important things about myself along the way; music is my everything, coffee is my second everything and black trumps all other colors by far.

Jokes aside, I did some real self discovery in high school, especially over the course of my senior year, and to be candid I’m pretty happy with what I found. I learned what was and what wasn’t
important and have channeled much of my energy this year at university into putting the ideals I developed over my last year in high school into practice. Two years of too much people pleasing, too much worrying about how others perceived me and too little attention paid to what makes me happy made for one extremely unhappy high school junior.

I was constantly anxious, it seemed like there wasn’t a moment when I wasn’t worrying about something and I realized I cannot and will not live the rest of my life that way.

To live my life essentially in constant fear and unpleasantness is not to live at all, it was just existing.

Starting in twelfth grade I finally began to live my life for me. Hobbies I never took too seriously became passions of mine. I threw myself into the things and relationships that I cared about and allowed myself to be completely open and vulnerable for the first time in my life. I stopped caring about what other people had to say about me behind my back and started to prove them wrong through my actions, my words and my choices.

Living my life for me did not come easy and I had to learn that my happiness as a number one priority was more important than those few extra toxic people in my life that would have lingered otherwise. It took me a very long time to accept the following universal truths: a) people change b) things change c) no matter how much a and b frighten you, there is absolutely NOTHING you can do about them. I’m constantly evolving, growing and for lack of a better word changing and that’s ok.

Things I simply thought were important to keep in mind during my senior year are now principles I live by from day to day, the people in my life are ones that want me to be a part of theirs as much as I want them to be a part of mine, life is good.

So really what I’m getting at here is it’s okay to be okay with who you are or what you’ve been working at already. I’ve just started a new chapter in my life hundreds of miles away from the place I call home and I’m expected to set a “goal” for myself to “accomplish” over the next year? Yeah right. I’m just living life.