Lambda Piece

September is nearly coming to a close. With all that has happened in these last months, it’s safe to assume that most of us want the year to come to an end. With this mentality we tell ourselves that once the new year begins, things will finally be different.

Before we begin, I’d like to clarify that I’m not going to be focusing on politics. While I do think it’s important to be informed and involved in them (Don’t forget to vote in November!) I’d rather keep this blog free from politics. They’re great fun for discussing, but this is not the place where I’d like to implement my own ideologies.

Instead, I’d like to talk about my own experience when it comes to “looking for change”.

What I mean by this is that feeling we all get at the end of the year, with our thoughts and wishes revolving into changing some personal (or local) aspect. Maybe we’d finally like to lose weight, start that hobby, etc.

For me, and those around me, these thoughts really take hold the closer we get to a new year. Perhaps it’s the entire “New Years Resolution” that pushes us to make these claims, or maybe it's the notion that because the year is coming to an end, the coming new year will somehow be different from the current one.

And who’s to say this way of looking at years is wrong? The way we keep track of time has allowed us to essentially fragment it into different sized chunks, giving us the ability to plan ahead and schedule things into the future. But scheduling something that isn’t going to happen until next year seems silly, as we all know things can change by the time we get there.

But a new year? Yeah, that gives us an almost tangible reset point.

The thing that struck me as interesting was that I felt this feeling during the lockdown. I saw that, for the most part, I would have loads of free time for a couple of months. My mind wandered to the possibility of using this time to make some changes I had always wanted to make.

This is not to say that I didn’t implement these changes. Not all of them, sure, but I was able to get to some of them in this time period.

But it was because of this idea in my head, that because I had this specific period of free time, I thought I could finally make these changes.

But why then, and not before in my “real” life?

It seems that we have grown so accustomed to these man-made time ranges that we have forgotten that not everything is set in stone. That habits can be broken whenever we want them to be broken, and there is no need to wait for that “perfect” time.

As they say, the best time to start something is at this very moment.

But that’s something hard to do when we’re so used to planning ahead, working carefully to manage our time as efficiently as possible. When in reality all that is needed is to push yourself at this very moment, and start immediately. Changes in the routine can be made as you see fit, but the important part is starting said routine.

With the pandemic still in full force, I urge my readers to not look at this time period as something we should “skip”.

Time is valuable, and lessons can be learned at all times. Things are rough, yes, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make the most of our current situation.

-Andrew