I love new years. I love how every year, at the stroke of midnight, everything has the potential to change. Of course it seems cheesy, and of course people have a tendency to give up on their resolutions approximately three days into the year. However, there is still an undeniable kind of magic that happens at new years.

I guess in a linear, logical sort of sense there is nothing magical about 11:59 turning into 12:00. There is nothing overly special about this Saturday night becoming Sunday. The cool thing about humanity, though, is that we've made the most mundane-seeming things into magical ideas. That is what I'm talking about—new years is the coolest. While some may be skeptical and like to embrace the thought that there is nothing special in the least about one year turning into the next, that it's no more than a new day that we have organized into our own system of time, I personally love to subscribe to the school of thought that says, "At midnight, everything changes."

If you don't agree, stop reading riiiiiiiiiiiight........now.

If you do, let's talk. At midnight something happens. At midnight, we get to start over. We get to look back on everything that has happened in the past year and in all our lives, and think about how we want to be different in the future. Not only do we take that valuable introspective time to look at ourselves in a new light, but we genuinely have the opportunity to put our dreams into action.

New Years gives us something to hold on to. It, no matter how much a creation of our own language and thought, gives us a reason to start over. It gives us a reason to say, "This is the year I will become a better me." No matter how foolish, we use this single second—the moment the clock turns to 12:00—as a reason to be better, and that in and of itself is magical. Any moment that has the kind of power that can take a world full of people and make them want to be better versions of themselves is pretty magical.

So what will you do this year? I know for me this is a big year. 2017 is the year my life changes literally forever. 2017 is the year I graduate from college and start a life outside of education, and outside of my mother's home. It seems this past year I sort of just let life happen to me. I tried my best to hold on, but it pretty much just tossed me around and did whatever it did.

My resolution for 2017 is to be intentional. I want to be intentional in my relationships, in my career, and in my final semester of school. It's hard to better oneself when they aren't purposefully and mindfully making decisions. This year I want to embrace life, and be directly involved in it. This will be a huge year, and I don't want to miss out on it by being a bystander.

The fact of the matter is, this will be a big year for all of you. Every year has the potential to change everything. Are you going to be a bystander, watching time pass you by? Or are you going to be intentionalchoosing to engage with and love life as much as you can with the time you've been given?