The New Year’s Dancing Animal

“We’re dancing animals,” said Kurt Vonnegut, relishing life’s simple pleasures in a PBS interview. As students return to campus this January, New Year’s resolutions don’t have to be about doing better or making up for lost time. Rather, living is about moving through the sands of time instead of fighting them. We’re dancing animals – let's show up without certainty.

Traditional resolutions can often feel like judgement rather than hope. Carrying more than just their backpacks, students carry the stress of making this semester count and to be more disciplined than before. This self-reflection in turn becomes self-criticism when we’re here on Earth to dance around even when the conditions aren’t perfect.

A more progressive resolution can be quieter. Less measurable. It can mean taking walks without counting steps, joining conversations without rehearsing what to say, or even just allowing curiosity to replace urgency.

Like animals that need their herds for warmth and protection, we move further when we move together. This new year let’s remember Western’s motto: enter with passion, leave with purpose. Passion can be as simple as showing up, and purpose often follows when we move forward together.

Vonnegut recalled, “Well, I meet a lot of people; and uh… see some great looking babes; and a fire engine goes by and I give them the ‘thumbs up’. And ask a woman what kind of dog that is… And, I don’t know… The moral of the story is, we’re here on Earth to fart around.” So, fart around. Resist the urge to treat every moment like a test.

Western’s campus is like an ecosystem. It thrives on shared movement and unexpected conversations. If we’re going to move through time anyway, we might as well dance while we’re here. Let 2026 be the year of the dancing animal.