Time Flies

Different nations have different holiday customs for this time of year though as residents of Norwich, a Global City, we should already know that I guess.

In many countries today is celebrated as St. Stephen’s Day. In Germany, it’s Zweite Weinachten, or Second Christmas, the day (after celebrating with your immediate family) to visit with friends and neighbors.

In England, this is Boxing Day Boxing Day, though not necessarily for reasons I thought of as a kid, when I imagined the Queen donning twelve-ounce gloves and going a few rounds with other members of the Royal Family.

Here in the Land of the Round Door-Knobs, a lot of us spend the day in stores and malls either exchanging a gift this time yesterday we were cooing in appreciation over receiving or grabbing bargains by the (shopping) cartload. .   

   

The newspapers and television news shows are filled with retrospectives of the soon-to-be-year-that-was though I suspect our respective mileages of rejoicing and regret may vary. It’s a matter of calendar logic to conclude we all got older but I’d hope when we look within, we can see we got better (and how).

The year is nearly done, the race is almost run. For many, all that's left is the settling of the tab with your significant other, your boss, your bank, your neighbors, and family and friends. Weird how someday this will all be part of the “Good Old Days.”

Actually, who we once were, or how we got here isn't, to me, nearly as important as what we do next, when we do it and when we begin. Experience, I’ve been told by people who look like they have a lot of I, is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted, and I’d add it's also nearly as much about what we don't know as what we do know. Stasis can only lead to decay and decline because there is no standing still, only forwards or backward. 

I hope 2018 was good, and if not good, then kind, to you and yours and I welcome the arrival of 2019 and the hope and promise of what it may bring for us all. I realize a year from now some of us will not be here to read the update to this entry (or write it, perhaps, for that matter) but while the actors and actresses are changed and exchanged on a daily basis (in every aspect of our everyday lives), the play goes on. We change partners but continue in the dance. 

With apologies to Dickens, 2018 was the best of years and the worst of years and 20198 will be the same. It's not really a matter of the number of days and hours in a year or a lifetime, but what we do with the space between the beginning and the end. I hope you have all the space you need for that which you need to do and look forward to talking to you next year.

-bill kenny