Anno Domini MMXIX: Quo Vadis?

Atlanta, GA
January 1, 2019

We look back at 2018 with apprehension and a whiff of disdain, but only briefly…like glancing over our shoulder to change lanes in heavy traffic…before hitting the gas and leaving it in the dust. 

Not that 2018 was without it’s moments. Amid the squalls, buoyant waves periodically raised us from an otherwise persistent undercurrent of dreariness and drudgery. 

Beautiful weddings and reunions in San Francisco and Chicago, wonderful wine and hospitality in Walla Walla, sublime scenery and serenity in Coeur d’Alene, my wife adorning and charming innumerable galas in Atlanta, and my son electrifying the St Louis regional competition with his high school band are memories I gladly carry into this year.

And…we got a dog.

But, echoing from hidden alcoves of the mind and concealed crevices of conscience, is the persistent, nagging question: Quo Vadis?

I am normally wary of pushing too quickly into the future, of hastily discarding time-tested thoughts, objectives, manners, and methods organically sanctioned by the long ordeal of experience, tradition, trial, and error. 

Sudden movements are more liable to break than to build. 
Abruptly overturning a pre-set table is less likely to favorably realign china than to scatter ceramic shards…small sharp pieces of which will, like unexploded mortars along the Marne, continue long after the initial disturbance to injure those who inadvertently step on them. History does not always accommodate the Whig theory.

But it was time for 2018 to die, and last night we drew the sheet over its withered remains…and enjoyed the wake.

New Year’s Eve has long been my least favorite holiday. Compulsory celebrations, obligatory parties, and constitutionally dubious police roadblocks never seemed a great way to wring out the old year or ring in the new. 

Yesterday a couple dear friends provided a pleasant alternative and a welcome diversion…allowing us to join them at their small annual gathering to set down, if only for a few hours, emotional baggage we lugged to and across the threshold of Janus.

The week between Christmas and the New Year is unlike any other, when time seems to almost stand still and catch its breath…allowing latent thoughts, considerations, and reflections to catch up. 

Hectic action…or bustling inertia…dominate the rest of the year, during most of which we strive to merely keep our head above water as we seek a happy port. Rarely during our daily tempests are we able to tread long enough to wonder if we are even wading in the right sea. 

This week, the waves are calm, and time tosses us a lifeline so we can float a moment, and look around, toward a limitless horizon. 

Where are we? Are we swimming with purpose…or cast adrift, carried by the impetuous tempo of fickle tides? 

Our family constellation lights and guides our way, but the deterioration of Rita’s fragile father reminds us that even the most fiery stars must eventually burn out, depriving us of our most enduring compass.

We must, like mariners moving from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere, at some point acclimate ourselves to unfamiliar patterns and be ready to chart a new course. But to what destination?

Even in this period of repose, the hands on the clock keep rotating and the sand continues to fall thru the hourglass. Time, as that wise sage Mick Jagger once said, waits for no one.

As the sun staggers slowly from the mat of the winter solstice, we wonder what we will do…and why we will do it…as the shadows shrink, the days lengthen, and our years shorten.

We contemplate, like the great Admiral Stockdale, who we are and why we are here. 

Aristotle noted that our lives change when our habits change, and that new habits bring new life. 

The well-worn cliché of new year resolutions is premised on this insight, tho’ most are quickly undone by another: that high achievers are motivated by pleasurable ends, under-achievers by pleasurable means. And most people that rely on new year resolutions are by nature under-achievers.

Assuming we can overcome human nature, to what changes, to which habits, shall we commit? And to what end?  

Recalling the overturned table, we need not be too radical, nor go all Bourbon to Bonaparte or Basil to Bolshevik, ditching perfectly reliable means and viable metrics while lopping off heads and starving millions to make our point. But we probably should edge a bit from the center of our comfort zone.

Where to start?

Dean Smith developed the “four corners” offense to milk the clock when his Tar Heels held late-game leads. To make the most of whatever time lies before us, a similar approach is warranted. 

To feed, strengthen, and balance the spiritual, mental, physical, and financial corners of our lives would seem admirable resolutions that would promote our happiness and deter actors and influences that erode our efforts and impair our intentions.

Spiritual and mental acuity stimulate a wise judgment of ends to accompany the effective improvement of means our physical and financial strength aim to foster. 

Health and wealth are necessary to sustain life; salvific grace, liberal arts, beautiful forms, and philosophic pursuits, while frequently denigrated in the din of daily strife, are what we live for. They supply the poetic refrain that nurtures and motivates our prosaic lives.

Not to demean physical health or financial well-being….The former is clearly essential, without which the latter fades into obscurity or irrelevance.

Money is important, but less so than understanding why we want it. We obviously must fill our bellies, warm our bodies, and cover our heads. Beyond that, plus a bed, a book, and a candle…and a nice stash of wine…what more do we need? 

Too much material accumulation blurs our blessings into burdens…weighing us down, reducing our options, increasing our stress while inhibiting our happiness.

So where does that leave us? 

Still searching for answers, we think have at least begun uncovering the right questions. So armed, we press ahead into the jungle of a new year, hoping to come out the other side a bit wiser…despite inevitable stumbles, scrapes, and scars.

Before pulling the weeds and hacking the branches from our prospective path, we acknowledge the passage of time by turning back the clock. 

Today is the Feast of the Solemnity of Mary, a Catholic holy day of obligation which I celebrated this morning at a traditional Roman Mass, in the venerable Latin language, in the ancient Tridentine rite…kneeling at communion rails, priest facing the altar, the works. 

This Holy Mass is not so much of another time as it is outside of time.

The solemn pageantry, incense, chants, and sacraments evoke the supernatural and discard the mundane, wrapping parishioners in mystical sweetness and celestial charm, manifested in a ceremony justifiably denoted as the “most beautiful thing this side of Heaven.” 

I can think of no better way to start the day, commence the year, or recall the ultimate source and summit of our seeking and striving. 

Some things are, after all, timeless.

JD