This is actually the second blog that I have written for today. I really didn’t like what I had written earlier in the day. I felt obliged to write something for the New Year. Unfortunately I was forcing the words onto the page and it read the same.
The reality is that this is my least favorite holiday, always has been since I was a kid. Rather than seeing it as the beginning of a New Year, I saw it as the end of the Christmas holiday. After preparing for Christmas since the day after Thanksgiving, the world promptly returned to its normal self on January 2nd when the Christmas decorations came down all at once. Our house looked like Whoville after the Grinch’s pillaging.
Tonight many people will not so much be celebrating the arrival of 2021, but the end of 2020. This is understandable since there has been so much loss and suffering. However, there are many who can look back at 2020 with joy. For all we know, this year may have seen the birth of the child who will develop a cure for cancer or an antidote to global warming. For many others, the transition to the new year will be greeted with more constrained optimism. There are plenty of challenges awaiting us as we awake the morning after our late-night reverie.
This is a reminder that we must all learn to celebrate the moment. We can’t simply wish away a year or more of our lives waiting for things to return to normal. Time is far too valuable. Take the time to savor what we have.
The picture below is of the Zytglogge in Bern, Switzerland. Legend has it that Einstein, who lived only 450’ from the bell, received the inspiration to formulate his theory of relativity upon gazing at the astrolabe. I’m no Einstein. I do know that as I get older, time seems to fly by at the speed of light. Last year more so than any other.
It does not surprise me that it is a jester who rings the chime bells of the Zytglogge. It is the fool that is in such a hurry that they lose all concept of time. Maybe this is a subtle reminder from the clockmaker for us all to slow down just a little bit and smell the flowers.
