It’s currently 1:31 am on January 1, 2018. My family is asleep, but I’m on the deck with/my iPad, listening to distant parties, firecrackers, and the whir of the hotel AC unit.
The point of this late-night (early/morning???) champagne, wine, and insomnia rant: I think we should all stay awake for New Year’s Eve. Hee’s why...
New Year’s Eve is a milestone holiday. A time to end a year and start a year. A time to bury old regrets and start new beginnings. When you’re in your 20’s, New Year’s Eve is a BIG DEAL. Mine involved huge parties, tons of alcohol,frigid pool plunges, a fight or two, and at least one person vomiting. In your 30’s, you have kids. You try to hang on to what New Year’s Eve USED to be. You/may catch up with other people with little kids, and you drink a little but then collapse at 12:15 am in the deep, desperate slumber of people that have been chronically sleep deprived for years. In your 40’s, your kids are older. You gather up with your other friends with older kids. Your kids are all more than happy to run around with sparklers until the wee hours. You drink wine and booze that is considerably more expensive that what you drank 20 years earlier, and try to keep each other awake until midnight.
It’s a stark, stark reality when - at 12:30 pm - you realize that you drank less than half/of the champagne you popped at midnight.
That all being said...I think, no matter how old you are, you should stay awake for New Year’s Eve, I mean realistically - how many New Year’s Eves do we get? 60, 70, 80 if we’re lucky. Many people don’t get that many, People get sick; people get in accidents. The unexpected steals those New Year’s Eves away. Statistically speaking, almost every single one of us will end 2018 with less people than we started it with. We’ll lose family members, friends, spouses, children. Actually, the older you get, the greater the odds that YOU will be the one who doesn’t make I through the year.
So here’s what I want you to do. Make a resolution that if you are here another year, you will stay awake and bring in the new year. I dn’t care if you have to sleep all day the day of and the day after. Do what you need to do to be awake and present at midnight on 12/31/18. Get together with your family. Your grandkids. Your friends. Or - if you’re alone - get a really/nice dinner and bottle/of champagne, and bring in the year alone, relaxed and appreciating the the joy of bringing the year in on your own terms.
New Year’s Eve changes as the years go on, but it’s significance doesn’t have to.
I will look forward to seeing your posts on Facebook, Instagram, etc, as you bring in 2019.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
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