"Auld Lang Syne": None too early, not too late...

Year(s) Gone By: With Christmas carols from the 24/7 radio stations featuring the standards from Burl Ives and friends still resonating in our heads (don't blame me, it was already there) and boxing day accomplished (longer lines this year due to the "six foot" stickers accentuated with Christmas decals, no doubt), we can once again warm our vocal chords with hot cider and other libations, in order to be properly prepared to all sing together (whatever together means to you this year) 'the song everyone sings but nobody knows'. This year it will undoubtedly be sung with a unique combination of melancholy, disgust, and gusto--three noteworthy sentiments among others from our collective pandemic political psyche of 2020. Here, I offer a brief review of the true meaning behind the song we will likely sing (and probably butcher, especially if you dare to go beyond the first verse), and the special significance for our times...

Move the Clock Forward: The title of the song ALS and key phrase is from a 1788 Scots poem by Robert Burns, widely used but especially on New Years Eve, to symbolize 'endings/new beginnings'. Ironically, as we recently enjoyed an extra hour of slumber by changing back from DST, a horde of folks are calling to turn the clocks ahead - at warp speed, no less. Come on, who among us hasn't lamented "Can't we just erase 2020...I'm so over this year..." Also now reflected in sardonic type humor such as "2020, the year of the bat, it's been a rat!". And, in advance of Christmas, "the year that the elf on a shelf will be replaced by Chucky"..."the year that the Grinch probably will steal Christmas". Yes, we can all relate and acknowledge that 2020 has indeed been a year that will probably 'go down in infamy' for most of us BUT...

Forget-me-not: ALS begins with a rhetorical question: "Is it right that old times be forgotten?" The answer is generally interpreted as a call to remember long-standing friendships. We all hope for a better year in 2021 (as we in turn did when we 'rang out' 2019), a year of viral relief ("2021, the year of the vaccine?"), one in which we no longer have to qualify our daily experience with such phrases as "I saw John and Melissa today...from a distance and masked..." One in which we can return to seeing family and friends up close and personal, enjoy more affection. On the other hand, many of you, while looking forward, have actually been able to find some 'diamonds in the rough'. These, reflected in such quotes as "it forced me to slow down and appreciate what's in front of me...I've cleaned out lots of stuff...I literally stopped and smelled our roses...". The most significant experience for me professionally and personally is the universal and 'harmonious' testimony of the adverse impact of, and the increased appreciation for, the intimacy of family and friends we so long for. May we never, ever forget...

Hold on a minute: Imagine you're standing in one of the coveted, newly designed spaces on Times Square, listening to the formal countdown of 2020, in anticipation of the (masked?) ball dropping..."Ten, nine, eight..." Imagine instead you have earned the privilege of being tucked into Elon Musk's version of a a space Uber, the Dragon capsule, in anticipation of being launched to the space station for six months..."Ten, nine, eight..." What would be your final thoughts in either case? What you are launching forward to, or what you are leaving behind? Most likely a combination of the two. While it's natural, especially under our current circumstances, to look forward to better times, there are also times it is important if not critical to put our finger on 'pause', to take an inventory of not only what we might be underappreciating about our current lot in life, but also details we have overlooked before launching forward ("the devil's in the details...").                                                                                                        

Our hour glass, moments of grace: Hopefully for you and for me, the foregoing critical details or otherwise unfinished business don't occur to us when we only have ten grains of sand left in our hour glass. Fortunately, many of these situations come to us when we are given some grace (some have described grace as the ability to tip the hour glass over, ONCE). For example, a high school student is allowed extra time to complete a late assignment, a common experience these days as teachers are showing more charity in these COVID times (not always to the student's long term benefit, as some procrastinators have admitted in the safety of our zoom conversations). More familiar to most of us, our tax preparers remind us this time of year that there's still time to contribute to that charitable organization you committed to earlier in the year, or max out your retirement contributions for 2020. Oh yes, there's also 33 days until Christmas--in the days of yesteryear you would have to ship gifts well in advance in order to have them arrive across country on time (or have a ready made explanation for little ones about Santa and the elves and union time standards...), whereas we now have daily emails from Amazon and their competitors, reassuring us that we have several hours left to get the gifts to the right doorstep. And the last minute (literally) holiday greeting cards you can send via email or even group texts (sorry Hallmark). Ah yes, grace at it's best...Beyond the obvious, is there any goal or area of personal growth that you may have unintentionally left behind during the last nine months, as you understandably became occupied with your respective COVID circumstances, or otherwise became distracted by the din of politics this election cycle? If so, it's not too late to 'relaunch'. For the rest of us, there's always New Year's resolutions...

Parting as friends, hail-fellow-well-met: Finishing this post (not the year quite yet) with an uplifting thought: whenever I see astronauts strapped in, I can't help thinking of the scene from Forest Gump when, given the privilege of meeting the president and asked how it feels to be an all American, he confides, "I gotta pee..." So, as you prepare to launch, whether it's gathering your things in your backpack for Times Square, putting your space suit on, or getting into the sleigh to go "over the river and through the woods..." we all hear the words of our moms, "did you remember to go to the bathroom...?" This particular year, accompanied by, "did you bring your hand sanitizer?"

Bring on the new, embrace the old and, to borrow from Burl: "Have a Holly, Jolly..."♬!