Rising
to the New Year
AFP
Photo Stephane de Sakutin
Fireworks
light the sky over the Champs Elysees Avenue in Paris
where
thousands of people were celebrating the new year, 01 January
2005.
The
New York Times - Editorial
January 1, 2005
No matter how you look at it, the new year is not going to be
as blank a slate as you hope. It never is. The starting over
is always figurative, a moral effort rather than an actual fresh
start. In fact, a new year like this one feels very much like
the revenge of the old year. Quarterly taxes - for 2004 - will
come due pretty soon, and then President Bush will be inaugurated.
The enormous momentum of life as we know it is not poised to
turn on a dime just so we can start out on Jan. 1 refreshed with
possibilities. You can feel the gravity of the past pulling at
your back the way real gravity pulls at your shoes.
But deep within us is the habit of looking forward, a habit
as powerful as the belief that our lives are somehow external
to us and that we can pick them up and rearrange them at will.
We live profoundly in time, painfully aware of the way the new
years stack up one by one.
We also live immersed in intention, trying to make the most
of what time has to offer. There are days when the likelihood
of real renewal seems almost impossible, when our lives seem
utterly conditioned by the past. And then there are those days
when renewal seems certain, merely a matter of making the right
choices, consciously. It would be a coincidence if one of those
days of rebirth happened to fall on the first of the year.
It's easy to dismiss the feeling of renewed intentions aroused
by the new year, easy to think of resolutions as party favors
of a sort, nothing more than wistful daydreams of being thinner,
healthier, richer or happier than we are, forgotten as soon as
made. But just ask anyone who's ever made a real change for the
better. There's nothing wistful about it. It isn't a daydream.
People who have fulfilled a latent possibility in themselves
can sense the possibilities lying hidden in so many human lives.
It doesn't take a revelation or a flash of light from heaven.
It takes getting out of the habit of standing apart from your
life, watching yourself as if you were two people instead of
just one.
Most animals do not make resolutions, as far as we know. The
dog isn't planning to do less dinner-table begging this year,
nor is the cat going to try to take fewer catnaps. Things are
as they are. But a human without hope, a human who has stopped
trying to reform himself or excel herself, has a very hard time
being fully human.
By custom, we think of New Year's Day as a personal time, a
moment for thinking about the course our lives are taking. It's
a private matter, we somehow feel, whether you choose to try
to make any changes for the better. After all, you can't force
hope on a person. But looking at the world around us, we see
the need for all the hopefulness and resolution that each of
us can muster We need all the commitment to change we can stir
up for the year ahead.
Petroleumworld
01 01 05
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New York Times 2005,
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