October 03, 2007

Age and Accomplishment

There are exactly two days each year upon which one is urged—nay, forced—to reflect upon one's perceived accomplishments of the year that has past: one is New Year's Eve, the other, one's day of birth; unsurprisingly, most people choose to ring in both through dangerous amounts of intoxication. What might begin as mere consumption for the purposes of celebration quickly gives way to imbibition (or some variant thereof, depending on your intoxicant of choice) simply for the sake of inebriation—and escape, no matter how fleeting or futile it may prove to be in the proverbial grand scheme of things.

Why is our desire to avoid such reflection so potent? Certainly one could attribute it to some subconscious desire to avoid regretting past decisions, as I suggested earlier (in a different context), but I suspect the actual reason is far more insidious. Perhaps we wish to supplant introspection with intoxication precisely because we know implicitly—if not explicitly—that such retrospective analysis can only lead to one conclusion: that our past year has seen us accomplish nothing at all, and that the next year will likely be no different. Without doubt, this is a position in which I find myself today. [...]