Welcome back, it’s a new year and time to enjoy life

This archived article was written by: Leland Lobato

Happy New Year everybody, yay! Hello to all of you. I would like to take this opportunity to say welcome back to those that are returning to the College of Eastern Utah. Also I would like to say to those who may be attending our wondrous institution of higher learning for the first time welcome and wish I could shake hands with all of you warmly.
Now having said that, and being that this is the first issue of the year, I am rambling for a little while. At the end of my rambling, I will wrap it up and tie together a few things that seemingly have nothing to do with each other. I’m just weird like that.
First some random information acquired throughout the course of my many adventures of roaming about the land. Now I’m not entirely sure about the exact number but it goes a little something like this. Ninety-eight, or 99 percent of all species that have ever existed on the planet Earth are now extinct. Interesting is it not?
That reminds me it was New Year’s Eve not to long ago. Think about it, another new year. Whoa. A whole new year of resolutions and what not. Supposedly a time for new things, new changes and new people. A time to start fresh with new attitudes, etc. A time for beginnings.
I am really not into that sort of thing. I usually just see new years as an excuse to go to a ridiculously wild party and engage in delinquent habits. But I am often thinking of some things differently around this time of year. Mostly along the lines of “Oh please don’t let anything too bad happen this year!”, or some other such nonsense.
Not that I am a negative person by any means, but there is a certain word I’m thinking of that starts with the letter “s” that has been known to happen. It rhymes with fit. I do like to think about all of the possibilities that come along with the new year. At any given moment on any day of any week, anything can happen. ANYTHING. Of course it usually does not, but the possibility still exists.
And then there are questions that come around that pop up waiting to be answered. What’s going to happen this year? Is this the year that I win the lottery? Is this the year that I meet that special someone? Could now be the time to take that trip I’ve been planning to go on? Will this be the year I get mauled by a pack of rabid squirrels? Who knows? But like I said, anything is possible.
Remember how I was talking about all those extinct species? Well part of my reasoning in bringing that up was that if, for whatever reason, they existed, lived and died off, to be replaced by other species and things, then can humanity be on the extinction list too? Even given everything that we have accomplished as a species I honestly don’t believe humanity was meant to last forever. We’re too crazy, no matter what we do and even in spite of, or perhaps because of our intelligence I do not believe we were meant to be here forever. But maybe we will end up to stubborn to succumb to the whims of nature. Anything is possible.
So now what has this got to do with New Years? I see it like this, start living right this instant. For those who do not know what I mean, allow me elaborate. I mean that whole live life to the fullest thing that you always hear about in movies, or from older people, or in books. Like that one guy who climbed a mountain when he was really sick and everybody asked him why he went up there to die, and he said that he did not go up there to die, he went up there to live. Personally I think that guy was crazy but to each his/her own. Look for anything that makes life exciting and seize it. Anything that makes you feel good, or even just feel.
We’re all in college right now am I not correct? So go do something stupid like they do in movies. Don’t hurt yourselves or anybody, and for the love of God, don’t do anything that will land you in jail for more than a month. But do something fun, just go out and have yourselves an adventure this weekend. This is the time for that sort of thing.
Even just one time go out and get wild and crazy if for no other reason than to be talking with your co-workers 10 or 15 years from now and everybody is talking about all the things they used to do in college you can at least have something to add to the conversation. Do it to be on top of that mountain with that guy. Just live. I mean it, because anything can happen at any given moment and who knows we could all be extinct tomorrow or the next day.
Finally I would just like to say that having ADD is kind of cool sometimes.