New Blues

Imagine you get a new phone. All you want to do is type on it and text on it to get the full use. You text people you rarely talk to just to use your phone. You’re inspired by the newness that rests in your hands. How can something so rectangular have so much power to make you do things that you usually wouldn’t? Before getting this phone, you’d sit in silence trying not to use the thing, and now, you’re the social butterfly coming out of your cocoon.

There’s always something new in life. There’s always something that will bring an air of excitement into your life. But when you begin to become comfortable with the newness, your appreciation for it fades. You begin to treat the newness like the other things that have disappeared from your affection and gratitude.

We are all guilty of this; I am convicted of forgetting the newness that life has brought to me. While I’m aware and disappointed that I don’t share the same affinity I once had, I reflect on the new things that I had once upon a time and how they made me feel. I can even picture each specific thing and the feeling it gave me. I want to go back to that place.

How do I get there? How do I reclaim something as abstract as newness? I have to begin to look at each day in the same manner I looked at those things. I have to appreciate what is and what is not given to me. If all things are working together for my good, then was this moment constructed to bring appreciation and gratitude to my remembrance?

Newness comes in all shapes, sizes, and fashions. The key is to appreciate the things that enter your life. Your affinity toward something new is a feeling: it’s your state of mind at a specific time. Stay in that space, and that newness will never fade.