A Thought as the Year Draws to a Close

Middle School.  As a child, I intently read George Orwell and wondered if Big Brother would really be watching me in 1984.  I remember watching 2001 A Space Odyssey with rapt attention.  To me it seemed pretty realistic at the time since space exploration was sprinting toward the newest frontier.  I was breathless with anticipation.

Frankly, each New Year does the same thing to me on a slightly smaller scale.  The news magazines list the necrology of the past year while the very next article delineates the coming advances of the techno-age.  Invariably, I forget what year it is for weeks after the change of the last digit.  What this year brings is the turn of all four digits, something humanity has not seen in one thousand years.

When 1984 arrived it was a bit anti-climactic.  We still lived in a democracy.  Nothing even close.

2001 came and went and HAL (that renegade computer in the distant expanses of space) is still he stuff of fantasy (but getting closer every day), I realize that progress is not as novel and frenetic as my imagination would paint it.

My confession: I wanted to be a space cowboy.  As a child I dreamed of rocketing off to the reaches of the universe in pursuit of the great secrets of that dark, diamond-studded universe.  I wrote to NASA and obtained their latest information on lunar probes, the lunar mobile, satellites, the space station and fact sheets on astronauts that I proudly hung on the wall above my bed.  The disappointing reality is that we are on the eve of the second millennium and I am tooling around in a car just like my dad’s 1970 Olds.  Bummer.

I guess my childhood hope was that time was going to create quantum leaps in the way I lived.  I too, have listened to many of my colleagues –both Jewish and Christian – as they revealed their secret belief: with time we become more civilized, better people.  Both our dreams have proved to be nothing more than fantasies.

An ancient belief states that there is no experience that does not contain the kernel of a great truth.  Our task?  To uncover that truth.

What these disappointments have proven is that time is not a vehicle; it is a gift. 

Remember the trips where we invested copious amounts of energy in the planning?  Anticipated for months, we finally embark on our journey only to find that the vacation turns out to be a dud.  The lesson?  Maybe the trip itself wasn’t supposed to be the best part.  Maybe the passage of time is the greatest gift to be celebrated.  Stopping for a drink, seeing the rolling hills, laughing with one another may be better than arriving.

Time is holy.  It is to celebrated.  Whatever happens along the road is simply to be absorbed and enjoyed.  In fact, time is much more holy than space.  Think of it: holy days mark our religious and secular calendars.  They are simply moments set aside.  Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Jewish theologian of the past generation, said that when we appreciate and sanctify time, we build glorious castles out of those moments. Expectations of what will come invariably disappoint.  Reality can never match the creations of the mind.  Instead, our job is to enjoy the holy passages of time.  What happens if we are preoccupied with thinking about what should happen rather than revel in the present?  Time goes and it can never be recovered.  There are no ‘make-ups’ in real life.

Perhaps the greatest blessing of the second millennium is that it has the potential to make us aware of the holiness of time.  I don’t know what will happen on December 31 and January 1 but I am willing to bet it will be a unique event.  As unique as January 2, 2018.