Among the bubblegummy sweetness of celebrations of New Year, I am going to be the grinch for you here.

Imagine you turned 20 and had 20,000 pebbles given to you in your hand and every year on 1 st January, you are supposed to drop around 350 of those pebbles to the king in exchange of living on his land.  You cant steal these pebbles, borrow them or even acquire more of them. Inevitably, after you pay them all, the King, the kind-hearted man that he is, will most certainly execute you because you are not productive anymore to his country. There is no two ways about this and everybody is executed when they run out of pebbles.

What would you do then?

You cant control the number of pebbles or being executed. You can only control what you do with those pebbles  within the years till you run out of those pebbles.

Would you still casually drop around those pebbles into the pond for the fun of it? Throw them around at your friends in parties? Throw them on to random girls to catch their attentions? Throw those pebbles onto people you don’t care much about and try to catch their attention only to show them how much fun you are having by throwing the pebbles around? Really?

The pebbles then , my friend, do not stay pebbles at all. They become diamonds.

Each pebble is a day of your life from the moment you turn 20.

“People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they’ll go to any length to live longer. But don’t think that’s the reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you’re going to while away the years, it’s far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you to do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life — and for me, for writing as whole. I believe many runners would agree”
― Haruki Murakami