It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man (or woman) who has lived out another year in its entirety must deserve some genuine acknowledgement — a pat on the back, a Hallmark card, vacations taken, champagnes popped. Around this time every year, I always feel this sense of self-assured entitlement, this pungent albeit unspoken satisfaction, permeating the wintry air.
It befuddled me, as this all-pervasive feeling appears to have little to do with the Christmas carols and variegated tree lights. It simply says, we’ve made it for another year, and for that we deserve some credit.
Or do we? Recently, it dawned on me that this end-of-the-year satisfaction, in essence, is not unlike the moment when you finally squeeze the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube, or pull out that lone trash bag from that jumbo pack you bought from Costco. O that sweet little relief, the sense of completion because we did not skip a single beat; we finished it up — an entire year! Of course, we’ll, in all likelihood, replace it with a toothpaste or trash bags of exactly the same brand; or, with another year –let’s face it — closely resembling the previous one, which is at least statistically true. But these mile markers offer much-needed structure and conclusiveness to help us cope with the amorphous chaos of life.
As life does not lend itself to much completeness — it’s ever evolving, metamorphosing, regurgitating, ever demolishing and rebuilding. New problems emerge the moment old problems disappear; and every time you feel convinced you got it all figured out, life has an ingenious way of demonstrating that you haven’t. It sometimes feels like a Sisyphean task, frustrating the heck out of us expecting to move on to the next hill, not knowing that it’s all part of an entwined, snarling, continuously moving mass.
But our sorry little human brains cannot comprehend it. We desire structure and order: a beginning and an end, some well-delineated trajectory, the idea of wrapping it up and moving on. Thus we invented these chronological markers such as the New Year, when we tie up the past year with a bow and celebrate our accomplishments.
For most of us, accomplishments did not involve anything trail-blazing, mind-blowing, war-ending, cancer-curing. We might have learned some small lessons that could help us achieve a slightly more healthy, productive year ahead. (So, next time one decides to finally get her act together and clean up the clutter around the house, she wouldn’t start with the wine cabinet. You know, things like that.) Yet chances are that we’ll carry ourselves intact into the next year, flaws and peccadilloes in tow.
So pretty much all we did in the past year was manage to show up, every day, for 365 consecutive days. But before you swoop into existential angst, let me assure you that you have earned a round of applause for it all: for showing up every morning — climbing out of bed, getting dressed, eating your leafy vegetables, picking up after your dog; for showing up in the office for an honest day’s work (or pretending to work); for showing up in the classroom, while the students would rather be playing FarmVille than learn about postmodern post-structuralist reconstructionist feminism literature; for showing up in meetings and conferences where people oozing self-confidence strategized the future of the universe; for showing up in dull receptions and trying to make small talks with strangers despite you having graduated from the Bridget Jones’ School of Social Awkwardness and all; for showing up in the most stupid Halloween party dressed as a milk-maid; for showing up in myriad airports, world-weary and soul-sick; for showing up in the dentist’s chair, wishing that you hadn’t.
But you did. We all did (with the rare exceptions of the Mark Madoffs among us — peace with their souls). And that ought to count for something, right? After all, as Woody Allen rightfully remarked, eighty percent of success is showing up. Because, without all the showing up, we wouldn’t have stumbled upon those sparkling, delicious, make-it-all-worthwhile moments: a perfect cup of Cappuccino on a rainy day, a little act of kindness from a stranger, a lovely banter between friends, a child’s laughter, a lovers’ kiss. We would never have known.
So here’s a toast to us all.
