New Year’s is a holiday filled with the common traditions of counting the seconds until that luminous ball drops, eating black-eyed peas and making resolutions beginning with “I Will” and “I Won’t”. Marking time may give reference to events of the past, but is that what all the fanfare is about?
The reason may lie in a more subtle setting. New Year’s offers a chance to look back at the main happenings of those 365 days and the little ones as well, the small acts of beatitude and humanity toward all that may have been in need of such. It gives us a chance to gaze to the past and see how far we’ve come as a species, and how so much more needs to be done to ensure that.
The parties will go on, the fun; the children begging their parents to stay up late will probably always be a part of this time of year, this passage into a new one. Through such, hope may be rekindled or formed after long periods of remaining dormant. New Year’s shows that even with all the adversities human beings and their great mother earth suffer daily, life goes on and will, regardless of the pain, joy and pure kindness displayed on a global stage.
“I think therefore I am,” declared Descartes (Meditation II), and in this case, reflection may also become a tradition of New Year’s. We can look back and see all that history teaches through a lens of change and gratitude that a new year has come, and with it new ideas, thoughts and beliefs may make their presence known and herald a future of unlimited potential.