The arrival of a new year seems to be the time when we are most inclined to talk about what’s coming, what we need to do to make our lives better, and how to get our acts together. But the best known piece of music associated with this date, and possibly the most familiar piece of music on the planet, looks in the opposite direction:
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And auld lang syne?
This time of year seems primarily devoted to things lost, to friends and loved ones gone, to recollections of persons whose significance, somehow, we never understood until they had drifted beyond reach. Why else would we ask whether we should forget them, and the era in which we knew them? Is it only because of the painful knowledge that we never let them know what they meant to us?
Auld lang syne indeed. Is there any other time of the year when having the DeLorean parked out front could mean more?