HAPPY NEW YEAR

It’s a little late, I know… About 20 days late, but Happy New Year, my friends!

I’ve been wondering why we celebrate the end of the year the way we do. Why do we throw this big party on 31st December every year…? Is it to celebrate our happiness, achievements and the good luck we were blessed with in the year gone by? Or are we celebrating the hope that the coming year will bring us more, bring us better things? Or do we get piss-drunk and party like there’s no tomorrow because we feel like we really don’t have much to celebrate in the rest of the 364 days in the year? What is the reason?

For some reason, I was thinking about all these things as I sat on a lovely beach in Bali, waiting for 2012 to begin. Maybe it was the generous dose of magic mushrooms in my system, but I couldn’t shake off this one nagging thought: what was so different about  31^st December? For those who doll up and head out to party the night away, how was this night any different, any more special than the average Friday or Saturday night? Every weekend, we follow the drill: dress in your finest –high heels for women, best cologne you can buy for men, head to swanky club, meet friends, get drunk, stumble back home.

But if the 31^st IS special. If we’re saying goodbye to an important year, or welcoming a year that promises happiness, shouldn’t we be doing it better? Shouldn’t we be treating it with more respect? Treating the end of the year like any other weekend is like treating your Lamborghini the same way you would your Honda City. While both are machines meant to transport your from point A to B, theirs IS a difference, isn’t there. In the same way, while a Friday night might mark the end of taxing week and the 31^st might help you see the last of a trying year; and both might simply be markers of time, there IS a difference.

I personally believe that the last 31st of the year must be different. It should mean something to us. Because it’s important to at least start a new year thinking we’re going to make it count. And take lessons from the year gone by in the future.

When we wake up on the morning on the 1^st of January, nothing really changes. We wake up a little later than usual, go to work in the same office, sit at the same desk, meet the same people, deal with the issues we’d left incomplete, fight the same fights, hate the same people… Same relationships, same friends, same us. Just a different calendar.

But maybe it doesn’t all have to be the same. Maybe more the new calendar should be joined with other changes…

I think that every year should be treated like a chapter of your life… A chapter that means something in the story of your life… And the lessons from that chapter have to mean something as well… All of us make mistakes; sometimes they are minor blips, sometimes major blunders… I think we should at least try and use the end of a year to say a final goodbye to those mistakes and blunders… We need to flush them out of our systems and promise ourselves to at least try to never make them again…

I think the best way to celebrate New Year’s Eve is by using it as a day meant for spring-cleaning the relationships closet of our lives… Get rid of the dead wood that we’ve accumulated through the year and make amends with the people that we may have knowingly or unknowingly hurt. It’s the time to either build the bridges that we’ve broken or burn them for good.

Let’s start treating the end of the year as a time to sit back and take stock…  As a time to sit back and take a long, hard look at ourselves and our lives… It is an important milestone, one that arrives at its designated time with military precision.

Very often, we tend to sweep everything under the carpet… All our emotional baggage, our hurts, aches, disappointments… We sweep them off the bed and shove them under the carpet and refuse to deal with it until one day some of the garbage underneath begins to stink up the place and you end up falling sick.

Imagine if we were to start using the end of every year as an excuse to spring-clean our heart and soul… Emotional baggage is the heaviest to carry and it keeps us from enjoying simple pleasures of our lives. So every year it needs to be cleaned… Every year we ought to make sure that we get rid of the hatred and negativity that we carry within us for things, places and people… At least at the beginning of the year, our slate needs to be clean. Don’t we owe ourselves that? We all make resolutions, but how many of us actually see them through? Sadly, most of us end up treating our resolutions like fads…

Let’s make the end of a year and the beginning of the next one count for something… Let’s write a new end…  The end of what we will not be and do next year… And let’s write a new beginning … The beginning of some new life experiences… Let the start of the New Year be more than another drunken haze. There are 52 other Fridays and Saturdays for that! HAPPY NEW YEAR!