auld lang syne

Almost like clockwork, I inevitably get this feeling on New Year’s Eve.

I think that it’s part of the reason I’ve traveled on NYE two of the last three years (last year I spent it with a friend who was in hospital), so I can try to put the whole thing out of my mind. I don’t know exactly where to place it on the spectrum of human emotion, or what name to give it. It’s something like fear, but it’s not that simple. It’s sentimental, but not in an I-don’t-want-to-let-go way. It’s a very hollow, slightly sharp feeling in my sternum shooting up to the base of my skull and posterior of my tongue. I think it’s the recognition that this is supposed to be a time marker of some sort, and not being exactly certain of what it’s marking. Couldn’t you pick any day and pause to be in awe of the fact that the earth has now taken one entire revolution around the sun? Maybe this feeling is akin to what many modern people experience on Christmas (luckily, I think I’ve reconciled my complex feelings about THAT holiday over the last few years)… that sense of altogether missing out on something that just can’t ever be as important or significant as you anticipate it to be; an evasive emotion of black matter that we have all heard of but never experienced.

It’s supposed to be a time when the whole developed world turns its attention to the same thing, like a giant wave of toasts and kisses progressing around the planet as the sun peeks over each time zone’s respective horizon and the tide washes in to cover up all of the trash strewn across the beach. A storm surge of positive energy, people celebrating the fact that the solar system still works, that we need not fear the end of the world; that we are leaving all of our sin, vice, and skeletons far, far back in the closet of the previous year. We open our new mass-produced calendars, transfer the birthday and anniversaries we need to remember, make resolutions that we have neither the conviction nor the resources to carry out.

I can’t help but feel that it’s a bit forced - a worldwide secular day of atonement. I am impaled by the irony of the human race this festive day each year. Admittedly, I add to the irony I am illuminating by not exempting or removing myself from participation in these annual rituals. Even in all of my cynicism, I’m part of the problem, and offer no solution.

Please excuse me if I cringe a little while wearing a silly tiara and blowing into a cheap plastic noisemaker at midnight tonight.