New Year’s Eve: the day of the year when time is most palpable. It’s the day of the year when I wrestle with my memory to recount the significant events of the previous 364 days, and invariably my memory throws back a sucker punch, flipping me around unprepared to face the bright new year. It’s the day that is always filled with tension and anxiety: tension between the past tugging at your sleeves, begging for your attention once more, and the future, inviting you to take on new opportunities and explore what you haven’t experienced; also anxiety, from the desire to have a better year ahead than the one that will soon end.
December 31 has actually looked the same for me for the past few years. People hurrying around, preparing things here and there, worrying the entire day so that they can be worry-free on the next. The streets increasingly becoming hostile with all the firecrackers flying around, and turning into a total battlefield as the clock strikes twelve. Since 2003, I’ve always spent a few minutes of New Year’s Eve just before midnight watching the skies, comparing the atmosphere of non-stop rumbling and countless flares to the footages from the Second Gulf War of anti-aircraft barrages lighting up and ripping apart the sky.
In the middle of all this action, it’s difficult to find peace, at least not in the metropolis. New Year’s Eve, as the last day of the year, personally beckons to me to be spent as a day of meditation. All the loud celebrations, through the past few years, increasingly felt phony to me, a desperate substitute for the real activity of finding meaning and purpose in the clutter of the previous twelve months. They say the firecrackers are meant to drive away evil spirits—I say that the only real evil spirits are those that reside in the unresolved predicaments of your mind.
2011 was a revolutionary year for me. It was a year full of revelations, realizations, and reprioritizations. I learned a lot, and in the process felt more ignorant. I experienced new things, and came out appreciating the darker sides of things, resolving to have more prudence and fortitude. All of these, just as in the way things should be.
Here’s to a prosperous and meaningful new year.
