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The Jagged Ambiguity of New Years
It’s really just a good excuse for a party — an anticlimactic sop, apparently to those of us who don’t, didn’t or can’t take Christmas as spiritually serious as others may. Some of us might even make a little list of resolutions that we promise ourselves to work on through the course of another year.
The cold hard fact of the matter is that fresh starts in life are random, at best — or, at least, not so automatic that they shift like gears into a new set of a dozen lunar cycles. It takes initiative.
But nothing stops us from consciously resolving habits or other behaviors for the better on any other given day.
We count years mostly to document history and measure finances. Learning the dates of pivotal historical events allows us the opportunity to appreciate that history does not happen all at once. And January allows opportunities to move on to new insurance plans.
We “come of age” in a certain civic or legal sense, because it is still a fair and orderly way to regulate the manner by which we participate in society — when we may start voting, when we may be required to register with Selective Service, when we start driving, when we start drinking, and how we begin learning how to get away with drinking while driving. Otherwise, calendars are fairly subjective instruments while compelling each of us into an…