As the clock strikes midnight, focus on your own joy, kindness, and mental space instead of social media pressures.
Tomorrow night, tens of millions of people across the world will stay up to see in the new year and bid the old year farewell. No one does it better than the Scots at Hogmanay and it’s thanks to them that we observe many of the rituals that we do at midnight.
Many of us in South Africa won’t be first footing, not with the armed security in the suburbs and the JMPD roadblocks.
It’s difficult to explain to the uninitiated what we are doing with a bottle of whisky in one hand and a lump of coal in the other, along with a coin, salt and shortbread after midnight, even though they are traditional gifts presaging warmth, wealth, flavour, food and cheer for the year ahead.
Many, though, will get reflective, even a little maudlin as the clock strikes 12 and someone puts on a recording of Scottish poet laureate Robbie Burns’ Auld Lang Syne to think of our friends and loved ones, especially those we might have lost contact with.
But should we rekindle contacts that might have died a natural death in the last year?
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The wags say the best thing about Facebook is that when you are unfriended, the trash takes itself out.
Shouldn’t we be doing the same with our friends’ lists, going through them on the platform, muting the mouthy and extricating ourselves from those who’ve started careening a bit too far to the right, or the left?
But why stop at social media? Our inboxes are choked with newsletters that we either once subscribed to in a moment of weakness or advertising spam because we didn’t tick the box in the marketing guff asking to opt out from being deluged by everything from Temu to timeshare.
Hit unsubscribe today in your inbox and your mental health will thank you in the morning.
Social media algorithms are even worse. Descartes might have said, “I think therefore I am,” but these days it’s more a case of I’m liked therefore I am.
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Stop hitting the heart button, stop feeling concerned for everyone else’s performative dramas.
Tomorrow night, when everyone’s blearily swearing friendship to those on either side, swaying with interlinked arms, put yourself first.
Better yet, get an early night.
When it comes to taking Burns’ “cup of kindness”, maybe our New Year’s resolution should come from our own cup of kindness first.
Happy New Year.
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