I think it relates a lot to what I said in the Birthday entry. You know, we are always forced at times to admit that life is moving forward, with or without us. This time of year, everyone is celebrating, but most don't even know why. What is it that makes the start of a new year so drawing, so powerful? I would have to say that it's the newness of it, the promise it lays out for you. It promises to be better than the last, without even asking you to do any work for it.

But when you really think about it, when you try to understand what all the hub-bub is about, you understand that it's a just another day. But now it's a day with a number, a day that can be referred back to easily and explicitly years down the road. You can't ask someone "What did you do on August 3rd in 1986?," but you can ask what your New Year resolutions were or are, or should have been. What did you do? Did you go to Times Square? Did you eat a nice dinner at home? Did you spend the night heaving your guts over a balcony?

If you see past the false promise of new hope, it just reminds you of the uncertainty that always lies ahead of us, always sits out there lurking behind the next bend, waiting to stick out a foot to catch our ankles as we plod along in our daily lives trying to keep up, to keep going, to 'find happiness.'

Regardless of all that we have accomplished, all that makes us happy, people are masocists by nature and will invariably concentrate on what they don't have, what they still need, or want, what they have lost or never attained, what is missing. Because for most of us, there is that hole that begs to be continually filled, and acts like a big black hole, sucking it all in and never giving back because we simply don't know what will fill it, what will give us that last piece to everlasting happiness, or at least a good night's rest once in a while.

When we look at what we have, there is no reason why you couldn't be happy with the shirt on your back, a buck in your pocket, a warm meal coming, and someone to say "Hi, how are you doing?" and really mean it. But this night, this new year's eve, is filled with all the hopes and promises of greener pastures that lurk in the back of our minds and pulls at them, pulls at our subconscious, and begs us to drop our realities of what has made us us, has made us happy, and what we really want in life to instead imagine a rose-colored reality of the future we really don't prescibe to in the first place.