It is New Years Eve (as if none of you knew that). And we usher in a New Year with symbols of the New Year's Baby pushing out Father Time. The New Year's Baby is a bit like Benjamin Button and ages dramatically in the course of a year and is in turn pushed out by the next New Year's Baby. It is very much an allegory of life.
There is this tension in life between the young and the old that we all experience whether we are aware of it or not. The young need the old for a while to survive and then they pretty much want them out of the way to give them their turn. What the young seldom realize is that their turn involves getting old and being looked at with disdain by the young who are waiting for you to retire or die and get out of the way so they can have their turn.
It is kind of an ugly, and never ending cycle. Sometimes the old protest and try and hold on to prove they are still valuable. This sometimes works for a while, but let's face it, depending upon your genes, getting old comes with lots of your parts and brain functions wearing out.
So an often logical alternative is to basically tell the young, "So long, and thanks for all of the fish." I don't suppose that means much to many of you because you are young and not well read or old and not well read.
The assumption of one generation over another is that the generation before them didn't know squat and that they will do everything better and do things a new way. The irony is, one of the things you learn when you are old is that there is nothing new, just things that you forgot and are going to regurgitate.
I will end this New Year's Eve post with this thought for the young. Enjoy being out there partying, drunkenly enjoying the passing of a sucky year (which pretty much they all are) and wondering who to kiss when the clock strikes 12. When you are old you'll just be in front of the television wishing they would drop the friggin' ball so you can go to bed.
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