Like many folk I'm happy to draw a line under the year 2020. When I learned elementary mathematics at grammar school we were taught, when working on a problem vertically, to draw a line before the solution. The line signified a finality—nothing else to add, subtract, divide or multiply. The sum would be what the sum would be. The line provided a certain satisfaction. On to the next problem, or better yet, homework finished. Lines mean finality. To draw "a line in the sand"—means we go no further, this is the limit of our acceptance.
So a line under 2020 is fitting—it's finally over, leave behind the old and on to the new. The year 2020 was a rough year, 2021 will be different, surely?
But lines are artificial. There are no straight lines in nature, so the saying goes. Lines drawn on maps create artificial borders with made up nations. Fighting over the artifact is a perennial human obsession.
So, being happy to draw a line under 2020 I am aware that as the ball dropped in Times Square, on the cusp of the new year, nothing really changed. My to-do list from Christmas Eve was the same list on January 1. My email in-box had become bloated after a week-off over Christmas. The coronavirus did not take a week-off as cases and deaths surged. The political shenanigans continued. As yet no line has been drawn in the 2020 US presidential election, though it should have been drawn in early November when a clear winner was inevitable.
Even so, the artificiality of new year on January 1 allows us a symbolic and psychologically important change. Though winter solstice would be a better and more natural new year— welcoming the return of the sun in the northern hemisphere—to mark the cycle in important. Traditional Chinese Medicine stresses the importance for health to align our bodies and habits with nature's seasons. Work with the grain of nature rather than against it. Mark the important changes. Find nature's rhythm. And nature's rhythm is constant change. The wise person observes the changes and flows with them.
In 2021, with perseverance and hard work my to-do list will be completed to good effect (though doubtless replaced by a new to-do list), the coronavirus vaccine will be widely distributed and we can return with gratitude to a more usual life-style (though suffering and mourning will still be with us), a new US President will usher in a period of stability and integrity (though the challenges will remain intense), an awakened sense of racial justice will move us toward greater equity (though racism's scourge will maintain it's death grip), the economy will pick up and those who have suffered over the last year will find some relief (though poverty will persist).
"Auld lang syne" bids our gratitude for the past, even in the midst of pain. "Happy New Year" expresses hope for a better future.
So, a line drawn under 2020. Here's to 2021!
+Ab. Andy