No more air planes, or speed trains, or freeways.

I’m gonna put my cynic hat on here and say that I just really don’t *get* what is often referred to as “New Years” (despite there only being one of them).

You may be saying to yourself something like, This is probably because you’re a recovering alcoholic and New Years is all about drinking, and I say to you that even as a drinker, I didn’t *get* New Years.  In fact, I never really understood any of the “drinking” holidays, a la St. Patty’s, Cinco de Mayo, etc.  That may be because I was drunk every day, but still.  I don’t get them.

In addition, the New Year’s Eve parties I have been to were exactly like every other party I had ever been to, begging the question, what makes this a New Year’s Eve party?  And that ball dropping in Times Square?  The same every year, and those people crammed into that cold place always look like they’re trying really hard to deny they’re bored.  And cold.

I suppose the main point here is that folks use “New Years”—which I suppose encompasses New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day—as a marker of time’s movement, and as a way to metaphorically “wipe the slate clean” with a fresh start, as well as reflecting on the passing year.  And I suppose that any such heady material undertaken on a mass basis is probably a good thing.  But that’s just not the way I personally function.  I think the idea of a (basically) arbitrary date being used to reflect, start anew, celebrate and generally ponder the state of your life is, well…arbitrary.  I don’t know about you, but I do these things more frequently than once a year.  They happen organically, and I take keen note of them as they happen. “New beginnings” happen when…well, when things begin, not with some date.  I reflect on the passing markers of time in my life when…well, when they pass.  Reflection, introspection, and the subsequent celebrations of the positive or changes to correct the negatives are an ongoing part of my life (don’t get me started on the phony uselessness of New Years Resolutions).  I suspect that most people are like me, like I just described.  Yet we continue to pretend that turning over this new calendar is somehow a useful, important, symbolic moment for us.  And I’m sorry to sound cynical, but it just isn’t.

I do not see the need to be nudged into contemplation and celebration by a date.

(I guess I must be a tad cynical to type out such a blog, but I thought…why not actually type what I’m thinking?  I never claimed to be an over-the-top optimist.  Sometimes I’m happy, sometimes I’m sad.  As the great Walt Whitman said, “I contain multitudes.” )

Also, here is an amazing song by Death Cab For Cutie called “The New Year”, which contains both my cynical feelings about the day itself, and my feelings that life, in general, is completely amazing:

The New Year
by Death Cab For Cutie

So this is the new year,
and i don’t feel any different.
The clanking of crystal,
explosions off in the distance.

So this is the new year
and I have no resolutions.
No self-assigned penance
for problems with easy solutions.

So everybody put your best suit or dress on.
Let’s make believe that we are wealthy for just this once.
Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
as thirty dialogs bleed into one.

I wish the world was flat like the old days,
and I could travel just by folding a map.
No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways.
There’d be no distance that could hold us back.