Happier New Year

We rang in the new year in West Texas watching the ball drop on a fuzzy cable connection. Why is it that watching the ball drop as a kid was so thrilling, and now it's just interesting to see what cool new technology they have added to the famous ball this year? (I'm sure it had something to do with being a kid awake at midnight, but I digress...) We had quite a conversation about the demise of Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest's acceptance of the Dick Clark torch. I thought this was a ridiculous change until we really considered all the ways that Ryan Seacrest is to our current pop culture what Dick Clark was forty (or fifty!?) years ago. He hosts American Idol, which is sort of today's version of what American Bandstand represented decades ago. And now you see him hosting all sorts of things...much like Dick Clark has done for, well, forever to me. (Will we still be watching Ryan Seacrest host stuff forty years from now!?) I feel sad for Dick Clark. He must love doing what he's always done, or he wouldn't still be sitting there struggling to speak in an understandable way, and that means he must be uncomfortable letting go of all he's ever known, succumbing to his mortality when he's always seemed ageless until recently. But enough about Dick Clark.

The ball dropped, as it always does, a flashing eternity and then, boom, it's a new year. In an instant, it's another year of opportunities, life changes, places to visit, inevitable and still-silent aging, marriage, laundry and dishes, back pain, family growth, spiritual formation...and so many other things we have yet to discover. 2006 was hard, and I gladly welcome another year of opportunities. I know it doesn't really change anything. Every day is the start of a new year, depending on how you look at it. But still, the first day of January just seems like a fresh start. Maybe it's because you get to take down one whole calendar and put up a new one. Change! And not just the current month to another picture very similar to the one before it...a whole new calendar, signifying (to me) permission to breathe a sigh of relief that the year is finally over. Those digits 2-0-0-7 represent HOPE that the next 365 days will be more palatable than the last, maybe even wonder-filled and exciting or at very least happy. And so I looked to the love of my life and meant a million things when I said, "Happier New Year," and he knew just what I meant.