Another New Year

I thought to myself "So THIS is how it feels like to live in a fairy tale...", as Angkor Wat slowly emerged from the dusky shadows into a soft gradient of light.

100% Ps untouched. Out of all the photographs I took, this is the one that I love the most.

It is befitting that I picked this beautiful sunrise to accompany my New Years post. This was my second Angkor Wat sunrise, and I had been hoping that this attempt would reward me with a really strong and powerful photograph (the 1st sunrise had a lot of cloud cover, was beautiful nonetheless). I imagined saturated hot colors dancing behind the temple, something similar to a fluttering Cambodian silk scarf. However, the temperature suddenly dropped overnight right before my 2nd scheduled sunrise trip, causing the earth to emanate rolls of misty vapor upwards into the sky. There were no clouds to refract the sunlight, but instead, the entire sky WAS the cloud, a watercolor curtain draped from Heaven to Earth.

At first I was a little disappointed because the sunrise was evolving the opposite way as I had envisioned. But us humans cannot control sunrises, it is what it is, we can only watch it unfold. Soon enough after settling into a nook in the Angkor wall, I accepted that God decided to show us a soft and mellow beauty today. When we open up our hearts we'll also open up our eyes and minds, and be able to appreciate things of different shapes and forms... and so that's what I did... and was rewarded with a strange and powerful connection to the world.

I loved drawing sunrises as a young child, although how exactly do you "draw" a sunrise if it's not exactly anything tangible? I shaded blank white sheets of paper with colored pencils with gentle and consistently pressured strokes, until all the colors blended into one another like a blended borderless prism. That morning, I saw my childhood come to life. It was a truly magical moment, realizing that dreams do come true. I cannot adequately describe the amazement churning inside me. And I felt peace. At the same time, I realized that Angkor Wat had encountered a million sunrises before, that perhaps only I thought that this sunrise was very special. Ultimately, my consciousness is what defines who I am and what my surroundings are. So at the end, I felt both very small and very big. Isn't this what Man has grappled with since the dawn of time?

Thus what is the meaning of another New Year? It is big because we make a milestone out of it, a measuring stick to track our achievements. But in truth, just like my colored pencil sunrise, there really is no definable border between adjacent periods of time. And that is why we must live and reach our goals IN THE PRESENT, because the present is the future and the future is the present.

Therefore, New Year's Resolutions are bullshit.

If you want to do something, don't wait. Just do it. 

Also, I don't think that New Year's Resolutions should include goals that we should reach anyway. Because for goals that are good for us, it really starts with the very next decision that we make. For example, if our resolution is to eat healthier, start with the very next thing we put into our mouths. So my goals to succeed professionally, to continue traveling, to build meaningful relationships... these are not resolutions since I can work these goals relatively easily with my current resources. 

I think that resolutions should be reasonable dreams. These are dreams because you do not possess the skills or background to achieve this easily. They should be self-challenging, self-improving, and a self-indulgent. :) So for 2013, I have just 2 resolutions.

1) To be able to speak conversational French or Spanish.

2) To be able to sing well.

Those are my 2013 sunrise clouds, adding a little spice to an otherwise already incredibly beautiful spectrum.