Unexpected New Year

January 1, 2014

01 Jan 2014

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I write this, and you will read it, at the start of a “new” year. I say “new” because that is how it has been parceled out in the proper number of days and weeks and months to make a year. One is over, one is beginning. For the next couple of weeks we will all persist in writing the wrong year on checks and letters. Quickly, the new year will become simply this year, and the old year will become attached to all that’s past.

To me, New Year’s Eve has always seemed a rather arbitrary festival. A grand excuse for a good party. A useful time for reflection. An occasion for resolutions to be made—or at least toyed with—for the future. I don’t subscribe to the notion of time that the new year traditionally promotes, with the old geezer being shown the door as the young tyke in diapers makes her entrance. I think that time accumulates for each of us, and that the slate is never made blank. It’s more like a mural that we keep adding panels to, bending around the corners of our lives.

There are such things as “new years” in all of our lives. But rarely do I think they begin and end according to the Roman calendar. They begin and end, at times by choice and at times by chance, at rather arbitrary moments of transformation. Perhaps in a moment of loss. Other times when we feel in control of our lives and make a decision to live differently. Maybe in that rare moment when we know we are in love. Or when we begin a new job, have a baby, write a poem, change our mind, get sick, lose a friend, look in a mirror.

You’ll know the time. You’ll know when your own “new year” has begun. When it happens, raise a toast, throw confetti, wear a funny hat, blow on a noisemaker. It’ll be time to mark. Even if it’s July. Especially if it’s July. Happy New Year, whenever.

From David Blanchard’s meditation manual, Listening for Our Song, published by Skinner House Books in 2002. Available from the UUA Bookstore or 800-215-9076.