Marking Time: Posted by Harry

Marking Time:

While maybe not my favorite, New Year’s is still a pretty good holiday. It’s of course about being with the people you love more than some forced and often substance-laden good time. It has been a tradition of mine since the late 70s to take a long walk or hike on New Year’s Day, weather permitting. Somehow walking through the woods or park, and hopefully with sun and clear air, not only shakes off the lethargy of the holidays and the winter solstice, but also cleanses and renews because the first day of the year is often a day where work, or social commitments, or plans are put on hold.

The biggest problem I have with New Years is the idea of marking time. I have the same problem with birthdays. I always like a good party, or celebration, always enjoy receiving a birthday gift and cake (who doesn’t), but it can be a bit ridiculous and arbitrary to feel that you must “sum up” what’s happened in your life over the past year and then make plans or resolutions for the coming year. It isn’t that one’s plans or resolutions are inherently a bad thing (although to quote John Lennon, “life is what’s happening while you’re busy making plans”) ---- it’s more the danger of taking life too seriously. I am most annoyed by the Engineering of Time, or the Linear Construct of Time, which we in the Western World have been programmed to do for centuries, beginning most likely with the appearance of clocks in the Middle Ages. I don’t even own a calendar or day planner, though I understand the need to remind myself of things, because I’m pretty absent minded. And although I’ve managed to incorporate the inevitability of aging and mortality into my thinking, I don’t see the necessity of attaching numbers to what I’m feeling on a cellular level.

Okay, so it’s the end of the first decade of the 21st Century. Frankly, I had never envisioned being here at this time, not out of any foreboding of apocalypse but simply because in my checkered youth I wasn’t capable of imagining so far into the future. And when I became older and succumbed to the lure of ball-gazing about where and how I’d ultimately wind up, the picture that shimmered in the mind’s crystal was not at all what came to pass, and that’s the beauty of it.

I know I’m cribbing from much great 19th and early 20th century literature, but I like august company, and hey ---- It’s New Year’s!

I have all the Love and Happiness I could ever possibly know. I am free.

Here’s to a Happy New Year with my Sally, and (God willing) the rest of the world.

Posted by Harry
12/31/2009