subject: New Year's Eve...just A Minute [print this page] What's amazing about New Years Eve is that a whole bunch of people, worldwide, are sitting on the precipice in between the old and new...together. During other holidays, like Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukkah, only some people are celebrating, praying or reflecting. Not on New Year's Eve. Nope, New Years Eve is like the Original Party, where anyone can come. It's a free for all. It doesn't matter if your American, Jewish, Christian, African American or whatever...you're invited. New Years Eve doesn't bother if you live in Afghanistan, China, Korea, Africa or next door. New Years Eve just wants you to come. It's the original open house bash, BYOB. She greets you at the door, invites you in and insists you sit together, on the edge between past and present.
I like this about New Years Eve. I like that she's an equal opportunity employer and ready to party. I like that people all over the world are thinking similar thoughts and holding their breath, in unison, during that countdown till midnight. She takes us all right up to the edge of time and then gives us a gentle nudge so that we tumble over the other side, into the New Year together.
There's something about being in between, at the precipice, on the edge, suspended between two breaths and dangling between last year and the new one that brings us crashing right smack into the present moment. It's not the last breath or the next one, no resolutions or regrets, no nightmares of last night or dreams of tomorrow, there's just NOW. This is nice I think. NOW provides a little place to rest, a refuge from the usual onslaught of the relentlessly fluctuating mind that is always dragging you back to yesterday or pushing you into tomorrow.
During the ordinary days of the year we sit on the precarious edge of time dangling our feet. On plain old ordinary days it's so tempting to slip into yesterday or leap into tomorrow. Hell, you can even slowly slide your way into 10 minutes ago without even noticing. But not on New Years Eve. During the 10 seconds before the clock strikes 12, she insists we PAY ATTENTION...together. And we do. We all watch those 10 seconds tic their way across time and then BANG! It's done. And we burst ourselves open in celebration. And we do this all over the world on the same day. I marvel at the gloriousness of it; the sublime unity we achieve by watching time together.
So this year on New Year's Eve at 12:00, no matter where I am or whom I'm with, I'm going to be thinking of you. Thinking of all the nameless faces and strangers I will never meet who attended the grand affair of New Years Eve with me. I'll remember that everyone got an invitation into the moment regardless of age, sexual orientation or nationality. During the days that march on after midnight I will remember the edge we all dangled on together on New Year's Eve, and I'll try to balance there more often. I'll try and look for the spaces between my breaths and find refuge and rest. I'll try and enter the moment that is NOW as much as often as possible. When my mind pushes me back towards regret or drags me forward into an endless "To Do" list; I'm going to remember the Grand Dame of the party calling us to attention during those few seconds before midnight. I'm going to remember how we all sat together, breathless, making the moment of NOW expand for us. I'm going to remember how, on New Year's Eve, we kinda defied the linear march of Time itself, by insisting it let us crawl into one of its moments. But it's tricky, see? Here I am slipping into tomorrow already.
