With 2016 behind us, I am trying to stay positive that in 2017 the only direction we can go in is up. Each year seems to get worse and scarier, but with seven supposedly being a lucky number, hopefully we can turn some things around this year.

My first wish is that kindness fills all our lives. Whether it is you are experiencing more kindness in each day, or you are providing kindness for a person in need. I think I can speak for us all, after seeing the year that we’ve had, that we can all stand to be a little more kind to each other. Hold the door, say please and thank you, offer a helping hand.

Next, is that I wish to see less tragedy, especially man made tragedy. Per CNN and their definition of Mass Shooting (an incident where four of more people are killed or injured including the shooter), there have been 136 Mass Shootings in the United States, and that is 136 too many. The argument of how to stop these types of tragedy has gone on for too long, and too many people have been killed while we’ve tried to find a solution. It is time to hunker down and figure it out.

Let’s all become more tolerant in 2017. And by tolerant, I mean tolerant of everything. Stop telling people they need to speak English if they’re going to live in this country. Stop complaining about others' religious beliefs. Eradicate the word “normal” from your vocabulary when talking about people. And for crying out loud, no one likes flying so let the fat person on the plane next to you travel in peace without huffing and puffing about the “inconvenience”, because I promise, they are six hundred times more uncomfortable than you are.

My last wish is for us all to be fearless. I know that some fear is good, and I know it is what has driven me to achieve a lot of my successes, but I’m talking about a different kind of fearless. Being confident and loving myself is one of the scariest things I can do. There’s the fear of being judged, there’s the stares, and the little voice saying that I’m not supposed to be confident, how can I be? These are the bodies and the lives that we’ve been given, and we can either spend our time, money, and happiness trying to be something that the world deems appealing, or we can focus on just living. There will always be the voice telling me to be something I’m not, but luckily, I have birdies on my shoulder to remind me to just spread my wings and fly.