New Year(s).

What is it about New Years that always leaves me feeling as though things simply aren’t as they should be? I guess when you place too much expectation on anything you’re bound to be disappointed - but I think with New Years it’s just that we’re all so ready for something new, for a fresh start where we can erase all the mistakes gone by (for there are several) and escape the regrets (for there are many) and the things that slipped through our fingers (too many to count) that we’re now so hopeful we’ll grasp them and get it right this time around.

We are eager, I think, to start over, to wipe the slate clean, because there is no other time in the year that has a change so large (we think), so significant as New Years, one year rolling into the next, to make us realize the things we’ve yet to realize, to look at the passage of time as something that doesn’t slow down for anyone. And in the time it takes for 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 to flash past you, you think you’ve been given back your chance to change the things that aren’t as they should be.

It is hope, I think, that we’re eager for, swilling champagne at over-priced bars with people we don’t know, or in a sea of thousands in Times Square, (cold and with a full bladder), just because we think we should, all to watch a ball drop from the top of a pole to the bottom.

And in the time it takes for 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...I’d like to think that all that matters is who is standing next to you when one year rolls into the next. Because you never do know, (do you?) what will happen between that exact moment after you count out 1 this year and before you start over again with 10 the next.

New years aren’t always so happy as we’d like them to be, but it’s hope after we count down that makes us yell it, scream it from the top of our lungs, happy, happy, happy (!) because we’re longing for it, crossing our fingers for it, praying for it under our breath. Please, please, please.

So Auld Lang Syne and raise your glass to hope and the eight-thousand-and-a-half hours between now, and when the countdown will inevitably (hopefully) begin again.