Find Life in the New Year

As you are reading this today, on the cusp of a new year, realize that are we carrying with us a strange cargo—dreams recycled, goals polished anew, resolutions scribbled on the fragile parchment of hope. And yet, deep within, many of us know the truth: our goals have not truly changed. They wear new clothes, but their bones are old, worn thin by years of trying and failing, reaching and falling short.

We’ve been taught to believe that life is in the achievement—in the big moments, the grand gestures, the milestones neatly pinned like medals on the timeline of existence. But I ask you, where has that gotten us? Where are the maps, the org charts, the instruction manuals leading us to joy? They lie scattered in dust, their lines too straight, their paths too narrow.

Because life, dear friends, does not live where we think it does.

Life is not in the carefully crafted plans or the meticulously calculated outcomes. Life exists in the cracks—those unscripted, unnoticed spaces between what we expect and what actually happens. It’s in the laugh you didn’t plan, shared with a stranger in a crowded place. It’s in the tear you shed quietly while reading words that reach a part of you even you had forgotten. It’s in the unexpected kindness that leaves you breathless and the serendipity that rearranges your soul.

Life is the silence after the fight, when love reaches across anger and refuses to let go. It’s in the hiccups of your best-laid plans, in the detours you curse until you realize they took you somewhere better.

We are all guilty of living by a script. We pursue happiness like a checklist, thinking if we just work harder, plan better, dream bigger, it will arrive wrapped in the bows of our effort. But happiness cannot be chased, because happiness is not a destination. It’s the glimmer of sunlight on the rocky path, the cool breeze that surprises you mid-struggle. Happiness is life, and life exists only in the unscripted.

I can’t help but notice the way my son bursts into belly laughs and my daughter giggles with unrestrained, unfiltered joy—so pure it’s contagious. Though, to be fair, Natalie’s giggles often carry a hint of mischievous, almost maniacal intent that’s impossible to ignore. Or perhaps take notice of the way an old friend still remembers the stories you’ve forgotten. Notice how strangers sometimes look at you as if they see a part of you that even you’ve lost sight of.

And when life is cruel—and it will be—notice that even then, it leaves gifts in the cracks. A shoulder to lean on. A lesson you didn’t know you needed. A quiet moment where you finally understand that nothing is permanent, and yet, everything matters.

We find life by letting go of the manual. Stop living by someone else’s rules, someone else’s timeline, someone else’s map. Throw it all away and walk the unpaved road, stumble through the underbrush, lose yourself in the wild. For it is there, in the unexpected, that life will whisper to you: I was never in the map. I was always in the margins.

This truth lies heavy in the air, unspoken yet undeniable. None of us know how many breaths we have left. So let us not waste another moment searching for life in the wrong places. Instead, let us hold tight to the fleeting, beautiful mess of the here and now.

Let us spread this awareness, not as a grand proclamation, but as a quiet revolution. When you see someone lost, show them the cracks where life waits patiently. Teach them to listen for the music between the notes, to read the margins where the truest words are written.

For some, this knowledge will mean the difference between despair and hope. For others, it will be the beginning of a life fully lived.

And so, I ask you: look for life where you least expect it. Not in your plans, not in your outcomes, but in the pauses, the detours, the moments that refuse to fit the script.

Be brave enough to step off the paved road. Be kind enough to guide others when they’re lost. And above all, live—not in the future you imagine, but in the unpolished, unplanned, beautifully chaotic now.

Because life is in the cracks, my friends. It always has been.

And if we learn to live there, we will never truly be lost.

Let’s make this year—not just another line in the timeline—but a year where we finally see, feel, and breathe the life we’ve been missing.

Happy New Year & God Bless.

- Todd Richard Owen