Thank Goodness It's Monday #441

“TIME FLIES LIKE AN ARROW …”

This penultimate day of 2013, it sure seems as if “Time flies like an arrow.” 

The one, the only Groucho (Marx) made the observation that I’ve repurposed as a perhaps painfully appropriate day-before-New Year’s Eve TGIM headline.

And, being Groucho, after a pause he added:

“… Fruit flies like a banana.”

 

I’ve always liked that quip. I particularly like the wordplay. It catches you off guard.

·         The first line sets a contemplative tone then, just when you figure the funny guy’s about to wax philosophic –

·         It flips the whole thing on its head and gives you a split-second “What???” moment until you process the changed-up meaning of the words.

·         And then it makes you (or at least me) smile.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: I like to repeat it and close with it after saying a few perhaps serious, heartfelt words at someone’s birthday or anniversary celebration or such. 

TGIM END-OF-2013 ACTION IDEA: And I think it’s a useful wrap up when it comes to year-end reminiscences.

How about you? Will you be among the midnight revelers tomorrow evening who mark the passage to 2014 with a raised glass, a rendition of Auld Lang Synge, an affectionate hug and possibly kiss, and perhaps a few appropriate words?

What will you be thinking?

What will you say?

Here are some additional seasonably suitable quotable quotes – a few thoughtfully witty in the spirit of Groucho’s -- that might prove useful as idea starters or for “borrowing” as your big finish tomorrow evening:

“An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in.

A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.”

Folksy columnist Bill Vaughan (1915-1977) came to that conclusion.

“New Year's Day - Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”

The ever-quotable Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain (1835-1910) added his cynical twist to resolution setting.

“Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account."

Irish writer and poet Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) quipped that.

“I think in terms of the day's resolutions, not the year's.”

Sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986) shaped that not-so-abstract idea.

 “I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.

Diarist and free spirit Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) shared that personal truth, similar to Henry Moore’s.

 

“But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty? I live according to twenty-year-old habits.”

Nobel Prize winner Andre Gide (1869-1951) set forth this query and observation.

“New Year's Day is every man's birthday.”

English critic, poet and essayist, Charles Lamb (1775-1834) gave this reason to celebrate the passage of the old year.

“It wouldn't be New Year's if I didn't have regrets.”

Former pro football player William Thomas is supposed to have made that glum seasonal observation.

"We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential."

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and columnist Ellen Goodman suggested this.

"Time has no divisions to mark its passage; there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols."

Nobel laureate Thomas Mann (1875-1955) noted this phenomenon. 

“New Year's Eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights.”

Collector and re-teller of children’s stories and fairy tales, Hamilton Wright Mabie, (1846–1916) said this.

 “Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning, but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.”

Journalist and appreciative author about the outdoors, Hal Borland (1900-1978) said that. 

“Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.”

That’s courtesy of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, (1809–1892) in 1850.

“The new year begins in a snow-storm of white vows.”

Speaking of snow at about the same time as Tennyson, social reformer, author and editor, George William Curtis (1824-1892) held this view.

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.”

Poet and pacifist Edith Lovejoy Pierce (1904-1983) added that thought to one of her blank pages.

“Be at War with your Vices,

at Peace with your Neighbours,

and let every New-Year find you a better Man.”

This was the counsel in Benjamin Franklin's December 1755 Poor Richard's Almanac.

For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

Poet T.S. Eliot, (1888-1965) made that clear in "Little Gidding,” the fourth and final poem of his Four Quartets.

Wishing you a peaceful finish to 2013 and thoughtful beginning to 2014.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373

tgimguy@gmail.com

P.S.  As I noted here last year about this time (TGIM#389) on New Year’s Eve I’m not so much a fan of Auld Lang Syne as I am of the Pete Seeger’s music and 1959 adaptation of the words from Ecclesiastes.

Here’s one version of the lyrics.

TO EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASON

(TURN, TURN, TURN)

Chorus:

To everything (turn, turn, turn)

There is a season (turn, turn, turn)

And a time for every purpose under heaven.

A time to be born, a time to die

A time to plant, a time to reap

A time to kill, a time to heal

A time to laugh, a time to weep.

A time to build up, a time to break down

A time to dance, a time to mourn

A time to cast away stones

A time to gather stones together.

A time of war, a time of peace

A time of love, a time of hate

A time you may embrace

A time to refrain from embracing.

A time to gain, a time to lose

A time to rend, a time to sew

A time of love, a time of hate

A time of peace

 

… I swear it's not too late.

 

And one of my favorite versions of Pete singing, HERE.