Waiting for the New Year

Technically, it is practically the new year already. A few more hours and 2008 will be upon us. And yet, tomorrow morning, not much will have changed. The new year will not feel very new.

It seems to me that we spend much of our lives waiting for a year that will feel new, a year when real, significant change will make our lives better or brighter or more exciting. In those years, we make connections that change us so much we are sure the world has changed too. We meet lifelong friends; we have babies; we begin new careers. Sometimes we realize, on that very day, that a new era has started for us. Sometimes we can only tell when we look back.

In the rest of the time, the time marked by calendars and clocks, we celebrate for all the times that were significant and passed by without a party. We celebrate for the truly new times that we hope are coming - times of adventure and fulfillment and laughter.

We celebrate because, for at least one evening, it helps us to be patient while we wait.

Happy New Year.

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