IN SOME CULTURES THEY DO NOT BEGIN TO COUNT YOUR BIRTHDAYS UNTIL AFTER YOU HAVE LIVED A YEAR.
Thus, in those places, everyone will always be one year younger than someone else born the same year somewhere else.
Don't you just love cultural nuance? So very interesting and ... practical when you think about it. It's like that first year is an extended gestation; and only after you have survived out in the world for the initial twelve months, then and only then are you considered truly born.
I've been so fascinated by this over the years, it has driven me to make some alterations in my own life. One of those deals with celebrating the turning of the New Year.
How to greet a year
For almost two decades I've opted to bring the new year in, not with fêting, revelry and amid a throng of cavorting strangers; but quietly, reflectively, meditatively. Then, an hour or so before midnight glides in, I'd sit down to write something, so I could greet the new year in that activity.
Why? Superstition. Tis said that what you are doing at the stroke of midnight from old year into new is the thing you will do the most of that year. That action will, thus, ever remain the same.
What I have altered is the making of resolutions. To be clear: I don't any more. And while I heartily wish people sincere Happy New Year, in myself I do not count that the New Year has truly begun until I experience my first triumph.
The lead up to whatever that will turn out to be is as a gestation period. The achievement is the birth of the new.
All that being said is simply to help you understand why my New Year's wishes to you, dear hearts, arrives so late.
I've made my first big accomplishment of the year, and I vow to use it to change my life and the lives of as many others as will allow, for the good, with what I have gained.
