But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day. ~Benjamin Disraeli
New Year’s Eve is something that I’ve never quite understood. In all honesty, the celebration of time passing carries sadness for me. Because the movement of the clock is so pensive, counting down the seconds to the next year is not an activity I relish.
My past has brought me to above realization. In 2008, I witnessed New Year’s Eve in the confines of a hospital room. The smell of burnt coffee littered the hallways, the flower pot painting on the waiting room felt out of place, and the beep-beep of the monitor made me feel like the pit in my stomach was growing outside of me. My father suffered a seizure and my family took turns keeping vigil by his bedside. I still remember the texture of the thin grey-blue patterned carpet and how I laid a blanket from home on the ground. As the clock hit 11:00 p.m., I told my Dad that 2009 approached. He didn’t hear me. My only conversation that night was with Dick Clark’s New Years Eve special. As I write this, the fragility of those minutes still stirs anxiety in me.
What that experience has taught me is this: All 525,600 minutes of a year are important. You don’t need a calendar or a New Year’s Eve celebration to tell you that. Every minute is a passage. Through open roads. Or confined tunnels. To happiness. Or sadness. To silence. To noise. To death. To life. But all of it, every single minute, is essential.
This year take a vow to honor your minutes. They define your passage.
Welcome! I am a lawyer turned freelance writer, essayist, and editor. On staff at Literary Mama and the co-founder and co-editor of the literary journal, The Sunlight Press, my essays and reported work have appeared in The Washington Post, The Lily, Saveur, Civil Eats, Brain, Child, ESPN and elsewhere. I am currently at work on a memoir on grief and culture and how it provides perspective on life’s ordinary graces. I invite you to appreciate the ordinary with me. I hope my daily practice of seeing the magic in the mundane helps you celebrate and find more of these moments in your life too.
Don’t count the minutes, but make every minute count.
It seems to be that that is exactly what you do, at least from what I ready here. And that is so inspiring!
I try to honor my minutes and don’t always succeed. But in 2012, I will make a better effort. That’s my vow.
Thank you. That’s all I can muster. *Quietly sobbing.*
We need to honor the minutes and make them count . A beautiful post, Rudri . Your dad would be proud. xo.
Honor your minutes… simply lovely, and quite a perfect summation of what I’ve been thinking of lately. Wishing you a wonderful 2012, Rudri.
Such a simply beautiful reminder. ” Honor your minutes.” It’s going to be my new motto. (Thank you for that. xo)
Cheers to honoring our minutes, Rudri. Happy new year and may you have many moments and minutes of joy!
Sometimes the past visits us whether we ask it to or not. Perhaps it offers us another view to honoring our minutes.
Lovely post, and wishing you a wonderful new year.
This year, for the first time in a long time, I treated NYE like any other night (except that I farmed out the kids so I could have the house to myself). It was quiet. I could reflect. I could relish every moment. Happy New Year Rudri. This post is a keeper.
Great statement. The passage of time saddens me as well. I can understand relishing the new year if your past one was particularly difficult, but in general, I view it as celebration of the year past, not a celebration of it ending.