New Year’s Day marks the passing of another year and the beginning of a new year. We take down the old calendar and replace it with a 2017 calendar.
The way America celebrates New Year’s Eve is fascinating: a countdown, a falling ball in Times Square in New York, and then a national paroxysm of celebration at midnight.
Geoffrey Chaucer once said that time and tide wait for no man. Chaucer lived in the 14th century, when, if one lived to be 57, as he did, the waves washed in early. In the 21st century, many of us mull our midlife crises at 57.
The passage of another year and arrival of a new year causes many people to contemplate reform: They will quit doing this or that, or start doing something or the other. Sometimes it works. Time doesn’t care. It just keeps ticking forward. It’s a shot clock you hear with a jarring buzzer.
The new year begins as an empty slate with nothing but a sense of incalculable possibilities and hope. As Henry Ward Beecher wrote in 1882, “Every man should be born again on the first of January.”
But the year will soon be filled with activities, promises and commitments, pleasures and disappointments, work, play, friends and family members. We predict it will be a busy one, beginning with the inauguration of a new president Jan. 20, the re-convening of Congress as well as the Tennessee Legislature. Students will go back to school after a long holiday, and as much as possible things will get back to normal.
However, a new calendar can be just as powerful a motivating force as a new job, a new relationship, a new home.
It can also be a good time to break with harmful patterns of the past; to release grudges and forgive; to say “Enough of that” and move on.
Locally, we would like to see some things happen — an energized and emboldened City Council, one that will get excited about recruiting new businesses, more than fast food restaurants, as well as further development downtown.
We would like to see the same in the county. Perhaps a County Commission and a Mayor that will resolve to work together to bring jobs and new businesses to our community. We would like to hear new talk about riverfront development, a onced-talk about project.
We hope it’s a good year for community organizations like Food for the Multitude, ARM, Hale Community Ministries, the TLC Community Center, United Way, and the Animal Shelter. Making a donation to one of these organizations would start the year on the right foot.
The new year will bring changes, as every year does. And though changes can be challenging and uncomfortable, they’re a necessary part of life. It’s best to face them head on rather than cling to the comforts of past memories.
A new beginning is valuable. We hope its promise will last long into the year.
We use time to chart progress; it does march onward. After that, maybe read a little Chaucer and then to bed. We have to get up in the morning. Time to get up and ignore time for another year. Nothing we can do about it. Oh, and the tide is out of your hands, too.
We would like to thank our readers, our letter writers, our friends and our critics. We hope to hear from all of you and we wish the best for you and your loved ones in 2017.