The conversation sometimes goes like this:

– “What a terrible year; I can’t wait for it to be over.”

– “I know, me too! I hope the new one in better.”

I have put it mildly. People are harsher. I have been harsher,

not only towards a year, but towards weeks and days and, practically, any estimated time interval. See, it’s not just the obvious “How can a period of time be held responsible for the events that take place during its unfolding?!”; there has to be more to these mostly unconscious expressions. I say “mostly” becuse I bet as you are reading this, you are thinking that some days, some weeks, some years are just bad, plain bad, and that there’s nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade, damn it. Ok, sure. But it’s imprecise, it’s too simplistic and, well, false. And, I suspect, it doesn’t set us for a more favourable new day, new week, new year, new, new… nothing, nothing new under the sun.

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9

What we repeat, repats.

When enough of us end the year cursing it, the clock strikes midnight on 31st December and the process of making a mess of our lives resets.

This, too, is imprecise.

At the end of a year you look back, your eyes give out pretty quickly, but what you do see are the shiny victories and the even shinier defeats. If your own life is not in total chaos, you look at that of those you love, or at the world at large, not that you can see the world at large, you see what you have seen on television (YouTube, you have seen it on bloody YouTube), that is to say you haven’t seen it, you haven’t seen the world at large, you’ve barely glimpsed at your own, and still you are moved to exclaim: “what a terrible year; I can’t wait for it to be over!”

How sad. How stupid.

This impossible world of ours, this imposible balance between all things, not just the two things (dare I say which? I do. Good and evil. Both, and balancing.) but all things balancing in such an unlikely fashion… How do you, or I, or anyone can judge it so flippantly, when you and I and anyone knows that in this past year, people have died, paople have been born, people have lost, people have won, grass has burned, grass has grown, grass has grown in gardens, grass has grown over graves, grass has grown over the ruins of things built to be burnt, grass has grown over things built to last. We don’t know why things are the way they are but we are quick to say they must be otherwise.

How sad. How stupid.

We are all baby stupid. Hear me out. When a baby cries becuse her mother left the room, the baby doesn’t know where her mother has gone, the baby doesn’t have the concept of another room, she doesn’t have the concept of mother either, she just knows, in her body and in her still floating consciousness, the warmth of touch and the warmth of love. So the baby cries, the baby suffers not becuse her mother has left the room, the baby suffers becuse

she doesn’t know.

We, too, suffer becuse of how little we know of who we are and what this place is. If we could see where things go when they are gone, if we could see… if we could really see, we would know not to say stupid things like “What a terrible year; I can’t wait for it to be over!”

Do us all a favour tonight and celebrate this past year. Say sweet things to it as it is leaving because where it’s going is where all the new ones will come from. And maybe they, the new years will at least have hope for us being at least a little bit grateful for the time we have been granted so that we may be granted some more so that we may become… more.