Of Auld Lang Syne
What is it about Auld Lang Syne that stirs us with a bitter sweet nostalgia and poignancy?
John Green in his book ‘The Anthropocene Reviewed’ explored the potency of Auld Lang Syne.,
He wrote
“I think Auld Lang Syne is popular because it's the rare song that is genuinely wistful - it acknowledges human longing without romanticising it, and it captures how each new year is a product of all the old ones”.
As I read those words a memory came to mind of a special new years eve. It must have been in the late 1990’s for I can still remember the folk Jeanine and I were visiting. There was wine and good people, laughter and nostalgia. We were young enough for the bewitching hour not to have whittled us down.
Now with loved ones literally on the other side of the planet and a year that has gone so quickly and yet so slowly, Auld Lang Syne seems to be larger, more powerful and yet more tender than ever.
You might like to bring to mind your own Auld Lang Syne wherever, and whoever that might be. Allow the song to stir that something special in you all over again.
Where were you, who were you with, what was said, what didn’t need to be said, but was actually spoken more powerfully than words? Where will Auld Lang Syne send you in 2022?
Perhaps John Green might help us again.
“I think about the many broad seas that have roared between me and the past, seas of neglect, seas of time, seas of death. I’ll never again speak to many of the people who have loved me into this moment. So we raise a glass to them - and hope that perhaps somewhere, they are raising a glass to us”.