Good Luck, You'll Need It!

So Christmas is over and it is on to the next big “Ha, You’re Still Single!” event of the year, New Year’s Eve. Which means that even though I survived crawling into bed alone Christmas Eve and waking up alone Christmas morning, I now get the honor of standing alone, looking cavalier and faking good cheer at the stroke of midnight on the 31st, while my friends all do a lip smack-down on their significant others.

But hey, ya pays your money and ya takes your chances. I don’t have to go to a New Year’s party; I can sit at home watching soft-core “adult” movies on Cinemax, right? And a few days later I can go get a cat, the first of a few dozen, and start my year with all the furry companionship I can stand. Then a couple years from now, when they come to saw the door off my apartment so they can take my 800 pound ass to the hospital, cats racing to and fro for cover, I can look up with my Crispy Crème encrusted face and say to the paramedic, “Hey, at least I wasn’t alone this New Year’s…”

Heck, maybe Karl, the really strong and heavily mustachioed paramedic, will give me a lip smack-down so the horror will be complete.

Who am I kidding, that won’t happen… Karl probably has a really hot boyfriend.

But I digress.

I didn’t intend to go on about the tragedy of single-hood, I actually wanted to talk about the insanity of placing any serious meaning on the first of the year. Why, as reasonable and educated adults, do we place so much emphasis and pin so many hopes on a date on the calendar? Just another day, another Tuesday like any other, but we make it out as if we are sending off the space shuttle of our whole year and screwing the launch will bring explosive disaster. F**k up New Year’s Day and spend the rest of the year searching the ocean for flaming wreckage.

Is that really how it works? Can anyone say that the successes, failures, promises, or recriminations on New Year’s day really had an impact on the rest of the year or the rest of a life? If I want to lose weight, am I only serious on the first and just kidding today, a Friday? We must be more “evolved” as a species. Aren’t the creatures that invented nuclear reactors and comfort-adjustable beds far enough along that each and every single day has the same opportunities for greatness, glory, anguish and angst as the next? Will Pakistan wake up Tuesday morning repaired and ready to make a resolution to stop fighting and start the “healing process”?

Somehow I doubt it.

Yet as skeptical as I am, I can’t help but think there is a little magic in that old silk hat they found.

No, that’s not right, I’m behind a holiday.

I’m suggesting that we do give meaning to the day beyond the rising and the setting of the sun. The Earth knows nothing of our calendar; it will turn inexorably around no matter that we call the day “January First 2008” or we rename it “Spaghetti-O’s” in honor of the famous Chef Boyardee. But it must mean something to us. We give it some power over our lives. We invest hope in the day.

I still don’t understand why we do, but I am willing to accept that we do. I have always said my understanding or acceptance of a thing is not necessary for it’s existence. So when I wake up this year on January 1st, I too will look with new hope for the future.

Even if I had to stand there at midnight alone, faking that bitter smile, and hoping that somehow in the next 365 days I might find another wandering soul to keep me company for at least a little while.

Pigassus