Should auld acquaintence be forgot.

I like to think that I’d have learned by now that no amount of resolutions I make at the start of every year will ever change who I really am. Why do we bother? Why do we keep insisting that there’s so much about ourselves we need to change? I suppose it’s because most of the time we’re all ready for something different, recognizing the things we lack in, the things we need to work on and do better at, that somehow along the way throughout those 364 days of our lives we give up on, or forget, or find new things to be upset about or frustrated with and promise ourselves we’ll fix and never do. I suppose there’s nothing like being able to see the actual passing of time the way you do when the clock strikes twelve at the start of a new year where you can almost see the past year of your life fly out the window and become lost, that makes you want to do something.

I wonder what most of us will be thinking as the countdown begins. All the anticipation, the expectations of where we should be in order to say so long to the past and welcome in the future. Does it matter more where we’re standing or who’s standing beside us? Traffic is blocked off in midtown, people have been outside in huddled masses next to strangers in almost single degree temperatures for hours just to watch a ball drop from the sky.

In this crazy world where things that are important can slip away from us so easily, I wonder why we bother celebrating the end of something as much as we do today over champagne and over-priced dinners and over-hyped spectacles in the middle of 42nd street. I suppose it’s the hope of starting over again or starting fresh with a clean slate that has us all in a frenzy, calling friends across the world with well wishes at midnight while enjoying a drink at an overcrowded and overpriced bar we paid too much to get into.

As the seconds slip down 10...9...8...7...6 I like to think I’ll be feeling OK about how this year has come to pass, fully accepting that while there are great many things I’ll resolve to do, almost none of them will get accomplished. 5...4...3...2...another day, another chance, another night without cabs, without inhibitions, without lost hope, without regret. Happy New Year.