New Year

This is one of those few days of the year—probably the only day—whereupon I may happily say “Bah humbug!” New Year’s Eve. Don’t’ like it. After all, we had had in general, if history is any witness, a pretty damn bad year leading up to the day, and there is no particular reason to suppose (again, if history may be the measure) that the coming year will be any better. Perhaps we all know this deep down, and that is why we choose to celebrate the turning with drunkenness and various other forms of debauchery. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. That is why we make oaths and resolutions that we really, honestly have no intention of fulfilling, especially as the new day dawns and we recognize that we have a whole year in which to be authentic, and we may as well not rush it. How is it that we celebrate with horns and hats and fireworks? What is it that we are celebrating? Did we win? Or did we just manage to stumble through another 365 days without falling off any cliffs high enough to kill us? I can more easily entertain the notion of an evening of worldwide mourning—how very far each of us has fallen away from what he should have been, how very often we have failed to love, how frequently we have been drawn instead to anger or carelessness or greed or weakness or betrayal or contentiousness. Do you desire a different sort of year, a different kind of world? Then mourn. Weep with those who are weeping. Learn to suffer well.