NEW YEAR FALLACIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19215, 2 January 1926, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEW YEAR FALLACIES.

TIME, THE CHANGELESS.

BY RAY RICHARDS,

Every year we are presented afresh with the spectacle of New Year's Day. Like some long-looked-for infant, heir to tremendous destinies, every New Year is heralded, waited for, welcomed with gifts and greetings. All our schemes and calculations, our aims and ambitions, assume a new and important significance in the light of the New Year. It is pathetic to notice how solemnly and with what a surprising amount of demonstration we perpetuate the fallacy of entering into a totally new realm and an entirely fresh set of experiences. Just why we persist in this pretty make-be-lieve and self-delusion no one seems to know. Perhaps it is one of the million evidences there are that, instead of being the sane and practical men and women we imagine ourselves to be, we are in reality a race of fantastic dreamers, queer and whimsical visionaries, chimerical Utopians and illusionists. Perhaps, also, that is why so many wild superstitions still flourish healthily among us. For it is not only among savage and primitive peoples that these things persist. They grow quite luxuriantly among educated people. Often you may sen sane and practical business men who are deeply concerned about an unlucky number and fashionable ladies become quite rapturous over a tea-cup. But to return to the New Year. The chief fact that seems plainly apparent is that there is nothing new about it. It may be true, as the ancient sage declares, that there is nothing new under the sun, but we may be perfectly certain that New Year's Day is not in any sense new. It is already hoary with age. It is older than the chestnut jokes that adorn its table. The most aged grandfather present, the hoariest octogenarian, is a tender child beside it. It is older than the language, older than empires, venerable as Time itself. One may truly speak of a good year, a bad year, a business, or a barren, a bright or a breezy, or even a bumpkin of a year. Almost any adjective may bo used that expresses an adequate meaning. But a New Year? —one might as well speak of a new centenarian, or a new antiquity, a new eternity, or a new oldness. Time and Happiness.

Another peculiar fallacy of the New Year is the apparently deep-rooted belief in its happiness. A happy New Year appears to be the general popular expectation. And this notwithstanding so many portentous and' terrible examples to the contrary. Really, the question of happiness is a relative and human affair, and has no necessary connection with any special or particular time, New Year or any other. It is an abstract quality and is not to be parcelled out like sandwiches at a picnic.

As a matter of fact, New Year's Day may not be an essentially happy day at all. Many have borne the portents of disaster. Happiness is like success and is quite distinct from any special season or time. It is depentdent on one's personal attitude and doing, and not at all upon the calendar dates.

But, at the last, the problem of the years is the problem of time itself. There is a popular idea abroad that time changes. We frequently hear it said, "The times are not what they were, they have changed, and we are changed with them." But, in plain fact, time does not change. Conditions . may. be different, men may alter and become Christian or churlish, but time itself never changes. It is immutable, changeless, infinite, immense.

There is something stirringly majestic about the changelessness of time. It neither hurries nor delays, but the years are ticked off on its dial with a relentless certainty and precision that are profoundly appalling. We may be as unconscious of the clock's ticking as the ornamental nymph on the mantel-shelf, but the changeless procession of similar moments does not stop. We may be as eager for the day to pass as a girl for her first party, but it takes no heed of our wants. Or we may put back the hands of the clock as industriously as a Daylight Saver in our zest for work. But night succeeds day and the seasons roll on in their rhythmic order slowly, mightily and with sublime majesty. A Fresh Beginning.

Much merriment has been made over New Year resolutions. Good intentions are always fragile things and their eggshell quality has led to a good deal «of ridicule and sometimes timidity. We are shy of making promises that we fear may be broken. We are held under the terror of what has been. ' We look back, as along a valley of the past, and see it full of the skeleton bones of broken good intentions. Is it any wonder that we are sometimes afraid to begin again lesl our failure should argue our fickleness, or a mental and moral fatigue that we would fain deny ? It is a fact that the fear of failure dogs the steps of many and may prevent many an auspicious beginning over again.

But the New Year, nevertheless, does present a convenient occasion for making high resolves. Whether the season be actually a new birth of time or not, we at least may make a fresh beginning. The only real failure possible is the failure to resolve again. It is not one road only that is paved with good intentions: every road that leads anywhere worth while is similarly cobbled. A life's high intentions are its only saving strength, and even failure in the past need be no disgrace if we but rise again and struggle on with noble endeavour. So that the chief aim of the New Year is evidently to procure an opportunity for a new manhood. Perhaps that is the prodigious parable of the new birth that our preachers are always reminding us of. A man's life is surely liable to be a series of such new births. Indeed, human life, as we see it, is not so much a journey, nor a walk, nor a race, but a series of falls or failures, a long succession of defeats, that are turned into ultimate victory by the indomitable courage and purpose of an unconquerable manhood.

A Season of Glaidness. Whatever popular fallacies there may bo about the New Year, there should be no question about our making it a season of gladness. Joy, gladness, optimism, these are the notes that echo and reverberate in the prelude to the year's great music. The past is gone and better things and conditions are imminent. But our happiness must be of a positive and personal nature. Happiness is ever a real and a glorious thing. It does not consist so much in the absence of misery nor the avoidance of melancholy. It is something much more positive. * Happiness is a hopeful and rapturous reality, like pleasure or a favourite relish. And pleasure is no negative virtue, any more than is mirth or laughter. These things are all mighty and flaming realities, the Magna Charta of our being. They are magnetic, and they are necessary. While we may not understand the mystery of the years, and it is not necessary that we should, there is stilly much room for gladness. Even the mystery itself is part" of the method of life. The season that we call New Year has opened, and, whether our experiences be glowing or grey, whether they be fascinating or fearful, its personal portent is tremendous for us all. But it is essential that wc approach it intensely and with joyous interest. May its novelty and delight remain with us undiminished.