A New Year’s Resolution Worth Keeping

The Counting Crows said it best: “...there's reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last.” Flannel wearing 90’s music aside, this statement has never felt more relevant.

While internet memes have made light-hearted fun at what a lot of people considered a hot mess of a year, it's important to acknowledge what made 2016 less than ideal. We did get Beyoncé’s Lemonade and chokers made a well-deserved comeback, but it was still a year where division due to different views never felt more palpable. Whether it was political or personal, there were walls built around people's beliefs with no common ground in sight.

With this New Year finally upon us I think it's fair to say we all deserve a fresh start.

We deserve to put our time and energy into positivity and shifting our focus to love, acceptance, and inclusivity.

This is why I love working here at COMPAS; because we're doing just that.

Whether it's giving homeless youth an opportunity to create beautiful art to be seen by hundreds of people, allowing a younger generation of writers to speak their minds with an open microphone, or giving our older generations the gift of vibrant memories and bringing them back to everything they knew and loved - it's all an opportunity to breathe new life into this new year.

Creativity is a powerful thing and although it may seem arbitrary to some, it changes lives.

Let's make 2017 the most creative year to date. Let's continue giving kids the mic to speak. Let's keep handing out pencils to write, brushes to paint, and tools to mold. Let's keep creativity alive. Unlike going to the gym five days a week, I'm confident this is a resolution we can keep.

By COMPAS staff member, Michael Salazar

Photos from COMPAS' Creative Community, Creative Classroom and Artful Aging™ programs.