The New Year Within

From The Editorial Board of The New York Times:

Sometimes the New Year comes in feeling merely newish, a matter of changing months and not much else. But sometimes the New Year brings with it a powerful sense of regeneration, as if, like certain insects, you were entering a new stage of complete metamorphosis.

…There are no hymns to the New Year, and the only music most of us associate with this holiday is that dirge of the departing year, “Auld Lang Syne.” There is no traditional ceremony either — everyone seems to celebrate the day in a different manner. And perhaps this is a holiday that defies both tradition and ceremony. Does it make sense, after all, to welcome the New Year in the Same Old Way? There is not much ritual in turning to a new page in the calendar. All the ritual lies within us, in the aspiration to live up to our highest hopes. The dead of winter is not a natural season for rebirth. Yet all of nature, dormant now under the cover of cold and snow, is preparing for a re-emergence that always seems spectacular when it eventually comes. Meanwhile, we persist, as much like ourselves on Jan. 1 as we were on Dec. 31. The newness we hope for is something that is ours to construct day by day.

Picture: “The Priest that Preyed” by Sam Weber.

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