My customary new year rant

It's that time of the year again when Facebook is flooded with greetings and pictures of people drinking their meaningless lives to stupor to bury the past year under sandcastles and look forward to a more meaningful year. Or perhaps I am simply being a tad bit presumptuous and a lot cynical. Perhaps they are the ones who have come to accept that life basically is meaningless and the only meaning that can be ascribed to it is one that we convince ourselves of, one that we rationalise when we are but sober. I mean what after all can one call a truly meaningful life? I had a "friendly" repartee with a "friend" a few days before the year ended on whether there should be a generalized definition of happiness and success in life or if it's more tailor-made, stitched to suit the individual disposition. I was of course of the latter opinion and my brave friend put up a brave argument to convince me of the former! His argument was this; if a person, capable of achieving something that would have meaning not just for himself but for at least a small part of society, should give up pursuing that for the  day-to-day bliss of fraternal and domestic debauchery, he might be happy by his definition but has lived an unsuccessful meaningless life as far as a general definition is concerned. I couldn't disagree. Hell no! But what I couldn't admit either was that I was afraid to accept such a definition. Yes, afraid! I felt that my young adult self was arguing with me, a self I had struggled to grow out of, rationalising once again that such idealism would lead me nowhere in this world. Last year saw a series of losses in my professional as well as personal life, each one following a decision taken not pragmatically but rather based on principles. Before I sound too obnoxious I should also admit that before such decisions there were mistakes of a complete idiot that had nothing to do with principles but rather misplaced, ill-defined rationalisations. So we are back to where we started. Rationalisations. They can lead us in either direction. They can help us to accept losses, they can help us to adapt to sub-optimal conditions. The question, however, is whether they can help us to emerge from such sub-optimal conditions and shake off the burden of past losses and mistakes? Here, I feel I falter for it isn't an easy task. Perhaps principles play an infallible part here. Our ideals, our definitions, the meaning that we proffer based on our principles is perhaps the pillar for future decisions. It's easier for me to write that my friend is right! No matter how early in the argument I realise he is right, I would always argue against just to convince myself that there exists no fallacy in his submissions. Now I accept there isn't. There never was. So here I am. My customary new year rant is over, admittedly very abruptly too. I have no new year resolutions. Just a disillusioned dreamer (as are most of my generation I believe) delving for my definition of the meaning of life. So, yes, a happy new year indeed!