Auld Lang Syne - sage

Auld Lang Syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne. 


I hate it, this passing of years, and the way we have to move to another year every first of January, and start calling the new year by another name. I hate the way every year is lost forever, never to return, and the way it's relegated to the past and to history in a World-wide midnight tizzy of booze, loud music, dancing, hugging and kissing and general merry-making. In the middle of all this, sometimes, I feel that all I am in touch with is a deep nostalgia for the year which is passing away, dying to the present, and being born into the past.

No one seems to harbour the same emotions as I do, when I look around me. Or do they? I wonder. Do the Champagne flute tinklers give a second thought to the year which is going out into the cold forever, carrying with it all the happy moments and sad experiences, successes, failures, everything which they would have lived through during that year? Do they think of each New Year's celebration as yet more tangible proof of the passage of time? Does the singing of Auld Lang Syne (Good Old Times) bring tears to their eyes, as it does to mine?

I usually find myself looking around me in the middle of such celebrations, feeling that there isn't much to celebrate. Each subsequent New Year's Eve is just another excuse to buy new frippery and finery to wrap oneself in, gorge oneself with food and drink and indulge in some wild partying and boozing - another celebration without a real reason, unless the reason is an organised ploy to ensure that we collectively forget that what we are actually doing is escaping the real issue here, which is tempus fugit......fugit....fugit. It escapes, and whether we like it or not, we have to travel with it, at the pace it sets for us. No time to look back. No time to change things. The past is gone, and nothing we do will change the way we are hurtling through life as time passes us by at an unforgiving pace. 

We can only look back to the past in our memories, and then only until those memories fade and become like dreams - hazy, distant, oftentimes unreal.

I remember listening to the ships in Grand Harbour welcoming in the New Year when I was young, lying in bed at my Grandma's. It always seemed like they were mourning the passing of the old rather than welcoming the new, and it always seemed that they were mourning with me - that they, at least, shared my feelings.

I treasure these old and faded, distant memories - memories which belong to another year. I treasure them just as I do all those years which have passed into history, gone for good. Once I lived them. They were mine. I was theirs. They were the "here and now". Real, solid, within my reach.

Similarly, today's "now" will soon be a memory ...nothing but a dream - a dream which will gradually make us all its own as we slowly slip into the realm of the past, to the tune of beautiful, haunting, yearly renditions of Auld Lang Syne.