Death, cycles, and a new year

At the approach of every new year I tend to think in terms of cycles, of good years and bad years, of transition years that led to great years, and naturally perhaps, of really bad years, mostly those characterized by death. And so it is this year, as I look back at the year about to end. It comes to me as neutral: long-nurtured dreams and hopes remained largely unrealized despite initial hopes that maybe, just maybe, this would be the year for me, but then again (thus far anyway), no major deaths occurred.

It is perhaps quite morbid to dwell on death on what ought to be a season of joy and rebirth, of hope in a new year, but having gone through what has seemed like a long season of death, I can perhaps be forgiven, if a little. Some deaths leave you very much diminished, and irreversibly changed.

And so as it had been in New Years’ past, my thoughts turn to life and death amid the smoke, the fireworks, and the noise. Amid expressions of hope, I think of cycles and seasons, as if anything would really change because a political or scientific institution says we have entered into a new cycle, a change in the year, a new revolution around the sun. But when exactly does the cycle start? Where exactly does an ellipse begin? Are we actually in a new cycle or somewhere in between? Amid all the hype, all the greetings, all the hopes, when the old year ends and the new one begins, the night that sees both will in fact be the same, the years separated by a second but sharing very much the same night, and with it my same self, diminished by the lives I have lost, in the new year as in the old.

And my thoughts, I expect, will turn to cycles.

I find myself hoping that at the end of what has been a rather neutral year, having brought no great success but then no great disappointments, neither some delirious ecstasy nor some debilitating sorrow, that in the law of cycles, if such even exists, this neutral year about to end will lead to a great one, however “great” may be defined. Maybe just a good one will do. Or maybe something neutral.

Life teaches us somehow to look at cycles, from good to bad and vice-versa. Or perhaps at seasons, one season leading to the next. How else should we hope, if we should hope at all, if not to hope that the good will come again? Somehow. Even in a long season of death, that there will be life again. Somehow. And amid the tears, there will be some joy, even if some space is reserved always for tears, for losses that never can be replaced, days and lives and warmth and smiles that can never be regained.

And so I expect to find myself this New Year’s Eve standing outside my home, as I had in years past, in good years and in bad; I expect to find myself watching the fireworks and taking in the noise and the strangely wonderful smell of fireworks, looking up at the sky perhaps like some romantic fool, and, like always, dwelling on cycles, remembering the lives that are no longer with me, whose absence has diminished me, and yet smiling somehow, somehow, for the lives that remain with me, making life bearable, at times even wonderful.

All in cycles, if we believe in such things. But really, what choice do we have but to believe, even if we don’t?