I’m thinking about New Years Day today.

Not the song, “New Years Day,” by U2, though it is fascinating what is happening with that band lately. There seems to be a severe backlash against them that is threatening to rewrite history. We all know and can agree their recent output is, um, not that good. (The free forced download of an album of this lesser work into our iTunes libraries several years ago didn’t help. Usually subpar albums come out, we may or may not listen, and we can immediately ignore it – this involuntary addition was an everyday reminder that we have this album we don’t like at all. We looked at U2, thought of this marketing ploy and underwhelming songs, and were incensed. It was a bad decision we couldn’t ignore.) Lately, U2 is average at best. (Incidentally, another thing that doesn’t help is that Bono has a son who is releasing terrific music under the band’s name Inhaler, further magnifying his father’s decline.) So now we’re deciding that they were never that great. The Joshua Tree is now just fine, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” was ok, and Zoo TV was too pretentious and self-important, just like they always were. Maybe some of this is true, (the “pretentious and self-important” part certainly is), and maybe “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” isn’t as transcendent as we want it to be, but I kind of hate this kind of revisionism. U2 mattered, it’s impossible to tell the story of our generation without them. They are important and we loved them (though we could never love them as much as they love them). The Joshua Tree is in fact awesome, “One” is the best thing they did and is absolutely as life-changing as we thought it was. They’re pretty awful now, but that simply doesn’t change yesterday. Morrissey’s newest, Make-Up Is A Lie, is heartbreakingly bad, very nearly unlistenable, but could never tarnish “Suedehead” and “The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores.” If he releases a thousand more stinkers like Make-Up, we’ll all keep getting our hearts smashed, but they can never touch his legacy.

But this is not what I mean. Actual New Years Day, January 1, is the day we decide to change our lives. We wait and wait for that day to flip the calendar and magically, completely transform our lives.

Why wait? That’s what I’m interested in. Is it simply because we have an easy anniversary date: The Day I (whatever)? I’m thinking I’ll lose weight, begin a new daily schedule, floss my teeth, write this new book, start a hobby, it can be anything. Everything is possible today, just like it is on New Year’s Day.

I guess we wait because we don’t really want to make that change, we want to continue in the old ways for a few more months/days/hours. That has to be it, right? In that case, it probably won’t take, will it? If my diet is beginning tomorrow so today I can gorge myself on chocolate cake and Oreos, maybe the diet is doomed to failure.

It’s a life changed based in “should’s” – “I should not eat this chocolate cake and Oreos“ – and that kind of should almost never changed us for long. It’s a shift rooted in guilt, shame, who others say we’re supposed to be. The main idea is usually a negative, we should not (whatever), no more (whatever).

I guess I just think we all need more Yes’s. Yes to ourselves, our bodies, spirits, our minds, souls, to each other, to Our Creator. Yes to show up to these wonderful gifts that are our lives. Every real, lasting transformation begins with a yes, rather than a no.

And yes’s cant wait for tomorrow.