New Year's 2009

A new year, a new start. Why does New Year’s always make one feel so hopeful, as though one can wipe everything clean, as though that can ever happen? It’s very religious thing, like the Jewish Day of Atonement, or a Christian baptism. In fact, many religions throughout history have had some sort of ceremony that involved atonement and a clearing away of past wrongs. It must be a very basic human need to feel that there don’t have to be consequences to one’s mistakes, to believe that one can change and avoid the same mistakes, to believe that perfection awaits them.

It is helpful. If a person gets a shiny new car or MP3 player or game system, they are bound to take very good care of it for a while. It’s only after that first mistake—that first little ding or scratch, the first time dropped or jolted or smacked because of skipping—that one’s care for that item diminishes. Before you know it, you’ve got a junker of a car, you don’t even bother to put a skin on your MP3 player, and you put your peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on top of your game system while you play. Once things reach that point, you’re not going to go back to caring for those things the way you did at the beginning.

If we didn’t believe in forgiveness, then relationships would fall apart after a few small mistakes. Forgiveness is so important, and not just in a spiritual way, but in a very practical way. If you harbor resentment over the wrong somebody has done you, you make it that much harder for them to treat you with the care they would exhibit for an undamaged item: in essence, you keep yourself a junker rather than allowing yourself to become a shiny convertible right off the showroom floor.

All of us in the secular world should have a Day of Atonement, a day when we remember to apologize for the wrongs we have done to others, and just as important, a day when we remember to forgive the wrongs others have done to us. I guess in some ways, New Year’s serves as that day.