When the Clock Strikes Midnight

Happy New Year

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Dear Bolu,

Whether the year will be good for you or it will be as bad as previous ones, who is to know? The preacher man says you are to know for it will be unto you according to your words and the strength of your faith. You wonder whether it is that faith that has brought you to this gathering or simply the fear of an unknown that could keep you from seeing the next daylight. But it doesn’t matter—you’re now in this sanctuary. You’re safe as long as you remain in this House of Grace. You rise to your feet, as commanded by the man on the pulpit. Ah, he’s elaborately dressed for an occasion that is hardly special. In contrast to your jeans, top, and neatly-tied scarf, he is rocking a three-piece suit with 007-like sweetness and a handkerchief to match. He makes a show of mopping the sweat from his face whenever his decrees and declarations resonate strongly with his sheep. The energy he radiates is infectious, but alas, you’ve been vaccinated! So when he says, “jump on your feet and shout hallelujah!'', and others quite literally leap into the air from their seats with telling verve, you slowly get out of your chair. You delicately place your belongings on the surface that knew the warmth of your body until moments ago. You do all these things without losing grace—your scarf is at no risk of displacement from your head, neither are your wears likely to suffer any crease nor are your other adornments in danger of falling off. And this begs the question; if you are so evidently full of grace, what are you looking for in this House?

You take a curious look at your watch, and it’s clear that the moment of reckoning is nigh. You wonder a bit about fairytales and their laboured obsession with the clock striking midnight. Perhaps this could be the start of your fairytale, and you are on the precipice of a  momentous event. Maybe—but you’re jolted out of your imaginings by the preacher man. “Pray!” he says and screams. You are ignorant of what to pray about because you were fantasising when he emphatically stated the prayer point. Ah, well. Your eyes are closed, and although you are half-distracted by the multitude of voices around, you attempt to say a few words. Whether they are expressions of hope, wishes or just strange mutterings, who is to know? But you say something, anything. And in no time, you can hear people heartily whispering congratulations to one another. They should still be praying, but they cannot contain their excitement and repress the urge to want to be the first to wish another person a happy new year. They have crossed over to the new year just as you have. What joy! You don’t feel it as much as they do, but you are obliged to share it with them. So you wear a lovely smile for men, women, and children alike who come to you bearing hugs, handshakes, and other warmhearted manifestations of joy. You reciprocate their gestures and wishes, which makes your heart a little lighter. The procession goes on a little longer, and a bit later, the preacher man brings the service to a halt. He shares the grace—again, what need have you for more grace when you already fully embody it? The hall empties, and as you depart, you wonder whether your fairytale has already begun or there is a delayed start for some reason. Nothing seemed to have changed when the clock struck midnight, and perhaps nothing will. And on your drive home, it’s just you alone in your car with your lonely thoughts in your desolate mind.

You come home to find no one to welcome you—not that you were expecting anyone to. Some have travelled for the holidays, and others have gone to a church just as you did. You're here now, scarfless and staring at the television under low lights. You're not very interested in what is being discussed by the presenters because they've been on about the same thing for the last few hours, talking about the far-away nations that just crossed over to the new year and the ones that are next in line. This all makes you wonder a bit about time, and as you've done all night, you readily give yourself to fantastical thoughts. You wonder whether it'd be possible to have the whole world recognise a single time zone as supreme. This way, we'd all celebrate the New Year and many other holidays at precisely the same time. If the planet was flat, perhaps that would be possible. But it's apparently round, and we're much too divided to come to any such consensus. There's nothing you can do about the matter, but you think it a bit unwholesome that people all over the world lay different claims to when a new year begins. As such, we have New Years and not just a new year. You give it more thought, and it confounds you a bit. You realise that if you stayed in the exact location all year, you'd be said to have lived through precisely 365 days when the clock strikes midnight on January 1. However, if you changed location at some point during the year—say to a place some hours behind your original location—when the clock strikes midnight on January 1 in your new location, you'd not have lived through precisely 365 days. On the back of that, you also realise that people could be born at the same instant but have different recorded birth dates if they were born in separate parts of the world. So a man who is a day older than you could very well be your mate. And he would lord it over you because you don’t know the truth.

Well.

Photo by Danil Aksenov on Unsplash

Your mind wanders still and stumbles on the rationalist sentiment that there's nothing special about the new year—it is simply a new day, and we experience those all the time. The rationalist says there's no reason to be enthusiastic about a change in your life simply because the earth made a complete orbit around the sun. He rubbishes the new-year-new-me philosophy. He questions the effectiveness of new year resolutions and calls them largely hypocritical schemes. Perhaps he has the numbers to show that most people don't follow through with said resolutions. Perhaps he doesn't, and it is merely his deduction. He says it makes no sense that we wait till the beginning of a new year or a new month or a new week before effecting change in our lives. He asks why we, as early as September, say, "The year has almost ended, so starting next year, I'd read more books". He asks; why does it happen that we recognise in the middle of November that we need to stop drinking alcohol but decide to wait till the next month or the next year before attempting to stop drinking? The rationalist asks; why can't we stop drinking immediately? He asks; why do we say to ourselves, "this month is already halfway gone so I'll continue drinking this unhealthy quantity of booze till the end of the month, and I'd start next month or next year on a clean slate"? He asks; what do we mean by "clean slate"? Isn't time a continuously flowing river? Doesn't the cleanliness or uncleanliness of your slate depend on your frame of reference? He asks, why does it bother us so much that if we stopped drinking alcohol in the middle of November, we'd not be able to say we didn't drink at all in November? So we continue to drink and say to ourselves—and to others with a certain boastful arrogance intended to give off the impression that we are responsible people who have lovely, enviable goals—"starting next month, I'm going to stop drinking" or "starting next year, I'm going to read one book per month". That way, we can later say even more pridefully that we've not drunk at all this month or that we've read many books this year. On and on, the rationalist goes, raising alarms about our tendency to associate "new points" on calendars with the newness of being.

You've heard the rationalist's argument before, but no one ever really says it, so you can't tell who said it. It's one of those arguments that float in the air between our bodies, seeping seamlessly into everyone's minds. No one says it, perhaps because they'd be accused of being killjoys or joy killers. But you know it. We all do. You recognise certain truths in the rationalist's argument. Still, you find it a bit discouraging, unhelpful—or perhaps more honestly, irrefutable. You explain why people are generally optimistic and wont to start journeying on their goals at new points on calendars, especially new months and new years. You find the rationalist's analogy of time being a continuously flowing river pretty useful. You say that a river doesn't flow at a continuous, singular speed. It ebbs; it flows. There are rapids and cataracts. There are periods of significant momentum and those of slowly moving currents. You argue that calendars and dates map out the river current such that energy and momentum are high at specific periods, especially firsts—the first day of the month, the first day of the year, the first year of the decade, the first year of the millennium, and so forth. As such, we tend to head into such moments with renewed optimism and vigour. So while it is factually accurate that time cares neither for dates nor calendars, these stop-start points we find on a calendar are gifts that serve to refresh us. You say it’s not totally abhorrent for us to tie our eagerness to begin new habits or change the state of our lives at the beginning of a new month or a new year. You say it’s not such a bad thing. Your explanation has several holes, of course, not the least of which is the inconsistency in your analogy. You’re making a pathetic argument. You know it, and so does the rationalist because perhaps, you are one and the same. But it’s okaay. Your drowsiness will knock you out soon enough, and your contemplations will cease.

You look at the clock, and it says you're about two hours into the new year. You pick up your phone reflexively—as most people tend to—and recollect a fond memory of an event that happened exactly a year ago. It’s a memory of you reading a Happy New Year text from your lover at exactly midnight, and boy was it flowery! It was good. It was great. It was your fairytale, but it isn’t anymore. Was it your fault it ended? Was it his? Who is to know? It’s an irredeemably ruined relationship, and you both don’t even talk anymore. You wonder about the words of prayer you uttered not too long ago in church. You wonder if your faith is strong enough to bring it to pass this year, as the preacher man boldly professed. You're left wondering as you gracefully slumber off. If the world doesn't give you a fairytale, perhaps you'll find one in the land of dreams.

You wake up groggy, reach for your phone—again, as most people tend to—and realise you’ve got a text. It’s him. It’s not as flowery, but it pleases you. It didn’t arrive at the stroke of midnight, but it came. Happy New Year, dear friend. And it confirms the strength of your faith.

Fin.

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P.S:

Do you find it distasteful that it is so easy to ruin a perfect “Good Morning” greeting? You walk up to someone—you could be having a rough day yourself, but who cares—and you say to them “good morning”, and their response is a question; “what is good about the morning?” You really can’t answer them because the question is rhetorical, but it angers you, and you’re thinking in your head, “am I the cause of your misfortunes?” “Are you the only one with problems?” “Did I chase you in your dream?” Anyway, I think it’s a pretty terrible response to a harmless greeting. It gladdens me that people can’t and don’t ruin “Happy New Year” and “Happy New Month” greetings in the same manner. So hear me out; perhaps we should change “Good Morning” to “Happy New Day” so that it’d be equally challenging to ruin. Great idea, right?

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Write you soon, merci!

- Wolemercy