I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something. So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

You’ll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living breathing screaming invitation to believe better things.

We create first impressions based on the smallest of things. A smile. A firm handshake. A friendly demeanor. But, humans are layered. We lift veil after veil, and it’s only when we slip past a smile and meander through our cortex that we find something that we can truly call human. We’re built as natural defense mechanisms. We hide our vulnerabilities and show strength with an upturned chin and a straight gait, but which of us mean it? Which of us can keep our shoulders like level weights without showing the vulnerability in our curves? We create angles in our form. We’ll choose empowerment in the form of redwoods instead of bending ourselves like boughs. We’re strong enough to hold an ocean instead of admitting that we’re fragile enough to be swallowed by the sea, and in that, I find humanity’s greatest flaw. We pretend to be someone we’re not, although fragility is what makes us all beautiful. We don suits and straighten our ties and walk around holding our breaths, knowing that once we step into the safety of our homes, we’d take off our skin and place them side-by-side next to our loafers. We are who we are when we believe that no one’s looking, and in turn we’re losing ourselves to what society is trying to mold us into. We’re told to conform to a monochrome world instead of painting our skies the colors we feel in. First impressions bother me because they’re nothing but well-dressed lies. I’m not interested in who you are at first glance. I’m not interested in the person that you claim to be. I only want to know what color your seas are. I only want to know what you bleed.

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.