Geoff Steck's TGIM #284: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Thank Goodness It's Monday #284

DON’T BURN THE TOAST

ON NEW YEAR’S EVE

No big, lofty TGIM message for the wrap up to 2010. Certainly there have been highlights and low spots for each and all in the year past. But the days ahead are a blank canvas (as they always are) and the future is optimistic for those who can hold that spirit in their hearts.

So, in something like 100 hours from now, many of us will lift a glass and offer up a thought or two appropriate to the spirit of January’s namesake from Roman mythology, Janus, the god of gates, doorways, beginnings, and endings.

Janus was also the patron of concrete and abstract beginnings of the world such as religion and the gods themselves, of human life, new historical ages, and economic enterprises.

Janus is traditionally depicted as having two heads, facing opposite directions.  And in his case, being two-faced is a good thing.

The New Year connection: Because he could see into the past with one face and into the future with the other, he was also the figure representing time.

One head looks back at the last year while the other simultaneously looks forward to the new and so Janus was frequently used to symbolize change and transitions such as the progression of past to future … of one condition to another … of one vision to another … the growing up of young people … and of one universe to another.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: At midnight on December 31, don’t let Bacchus (the Roman god of wine) or Somnus (the Roman god of sleep) muddle your thinking if you’re inclined to acknowledge the changing year with a toast.

TGIM IDEA IN ACTION: Be Janus-like when you give voice to your sentiments.

Here are a few well-said words, origin unknown, that you might appropriate:

Here's a toast to the future ..

A toast to the past …

And a toast to our friends, far and near.

May the future be pleasant …

The past a bright dream …

 May our friends remain faithful and dear.

But wait. There’s more. Since we strive for a sense of balance and equality in these TGIM messages …

If you are a low-key or not-at-all observer of the midnight transition between calendar years, perhaps you may want to note the poetic sentiments of –

Ella Wheeler Wilcox. She was an American author and popular poet, perhaps best known for expressing the sentiment, "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone.” The plaque that quotes and honors her in San Francisco’s Jack Kerouac Alley reads, "Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes."

In her poem The Year, published in 1910, she observes:

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That's not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that's the burden of a year.

As for me: Every New Year’s Eve when Auld Lang Syne plays (a largely backward looking sentiment that translates as “times gone by”) a different tune and meaningful words run through my head:

Turn, Turn, Turn. It’s Pete Seeger’s music and 1959 adaptation of the words from Ecclesiastes that come to mind.

To every thing there is a season,

And a time to every purpose under heaven.

And, of course, that’s just the opening line.

There’s more. Much more. Sing it to yourself and I wish you –

Happiness and Success in 2011

I swear it’s not too late.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing
8 Depot Square
Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com   

GEOFF STECK leads Alexander Publishing & Marketing, a company he formed in 1986. The core AP&M mission: To create and publish leadership, sales mastery, self-improvement and workplace skill-building resources and tools. The focus: Areas such as business communication, staff support, customer care and frontline management. Geoff also puts his corporate and entrepreneurial experience, independent perspective, and skills as a catalyst to work for other firms (ranging from multinational corporations to more modest operations), not-for-profits, and individuals who have conceived or developed programs or initiatives but are frustrated in getting them implemented.