new year, new season, new hair, new clothes, new job, new housemate
new
when you think about it ‘new’ is an interesting adjective. after all - for the most part - something that is new to oneself is rarely ‘new’ to anyone else - certainly not everyone else. anything we see, anything we buy, anything we make is produced, created and derived from what others have done before us.
in fact most dictionaries will tell us that the word new means exactly those things:
- something actually is new in the strict sense of the word
- something exists but is being experienced by another person
- describing something as better than what has gone before
most of my new examples above fall into the last two categories though. for example i’d lump new year into the latter and claim i’m some sort of enthusiastic optimist about the ever improving nature of the world and/or my life. new clothes fall into the middle - others have the same clothes pretty much, they are just new to me.
we are somewhat obsessed with ‘new’. new iPods, or new laptops. new music. new films. in our culture, we gather and buzz around new things - even more so if they are shiny and novel. when we greet friends we ask what’s new - as if anything that isn’t new is somehow not worth asking or knowing about. there is novelty in many things if we look for it - but somehow many things which should count as novel become mundane in todays face paced commercialism.
so i have new things - i hope you do to. and if you don’t think you do; look harder.
bootnote
such is my apparent love for new things; the only capital letter i used in this post was in a trademark. hmm.