I found this piece I wrote two years ago on the day after my birthday and thought it was worthwhile enough to document and share:
My birthday was yesterday, so of course, what with my fairly consistent philosophical pondering, it caused me to sit and ruminate on existence and the functions which propel it, consequently leading to further introspection on my own behaviors and those of the people around me which so closely resemble the people and places around us. That being said, I wanted to express some of the facts and ideas that I’ve already known or considered that have now conjoined with newer experiences and understandings of human behavior and our (dis)connection to the world and time.
To begin, everything in the universe functions in cycles. Contrarians may want to discount the significance of a new calendar year or turning a new age, but despite what some may tell themselves, we are animals whose behavior reflects that of our respective environments. In contemplating these cycles you can know that winter is when the world grows cold, when the deciduous trees lose their leaves, standing bare and temporarily dormant, as birds fly south. Spring is when those trees have buds again which sprout into leaves when those birds return and the process repeats. In the end, you can call these seasons any name you will, but they still exist; these periods are observable, they are real, they have their functions and calling them by another name doesn’t take away their presence in time or significance within our experience of the world. Considering this, we clearly and inherently possess a need to recognize, acknowledge and celebrate the patterns of existence and so, in essence, we form rituals as a physical act of poetry in praise of reality, life, and death.
Time is a dimension, one that possesses gravity and we can all feel the flux of its pressing weight. The way we’ve chosen to measure time at present may stray from the way it had been dispersed before, but I think slapping the “arbitrary” label on dates is a result of some form of disconnection from or denial of ones intrinsic nature. If we didn’t have such innate desires to shed old skin, entities and symbols like the Phoenix and the Ouroboros would not exist. There are semiotics behind these symbols which are obvious to the observant eye and are all the proof we need to see how our connections to the cyclical nature of life has been of great importance to us for thousands of years. What it really boils down to is that I don’t see the point in denying reverence to the past and future and the bearing these two things have on our present state.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I simply think saying goodbye to the old is healthy and as age settles in, as the tribulations of life become increasingly more difficult, the value of bidding adieu to the past and increases, as does the importance of developing hope for the future.
That said, I’m extremely glad it’s a new year and to be entering a new year of my life.
Light and love xo
Anne K. O'Neill 