The New Year Blue

Don't you just love New Year's?

You can start all over.

Everybody gets a second chance.

Forrest Gump has to be my favorite movie of all the time. I'm never tired of watching it, or quoting from it.

It is the breaking dawn of 2014 and everyone's inboxes are supposedly filled with warmest wishes and most positive outlooks to the future and many happy returns. No one mentions it, the New Year blue, but everyone has it if you ask. We prefer to think of the New Year blue as a spontaneous mood alternation in between periods of blissful joy, not the reigning emotion on the special occasion.

'sides, it is neither sorrow nor sadness. It is a blue. Something rather suffocating, consuming, right when you're thinking happy thoughts. It's natural. It's periodical. It's expected.

It's less obvious in the screaming crowd of people wearing funny hats at Time Square on December 31, as Ryan Seacrest was counting down, when confetti poured all over them and the traditional melody Auld Lang Syne was in the air. Nevertheless, after some remarkable kissing scenes, the crowd disbanded, and the people who successfully convinced themselves that descending giant disco ball and paper rain were worth waiting for 12 hours in 27 degree Fahrenheit began withdrawing to their own lodgings. (Seriously, it would only seem worth it for me if you were right at the shoulders of Ryan Seacrest; and I wonder how the lucky ones who were refrained from pulling his hair). Time to chew on the New Year blue.

I used to think that ABBA's Happy New Year song was a universal song and ABBA only sang the best cover ever known to mankind. Facts now are, Happy New Year is not universal- Americans are clueless about it. The song is trademarked and is ABBA-original. Its composers are Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Anderson, the two male singer-members of ABBA (a.k.a. the BB in ABBA) and also who wrote most of their songs. So the fact that no one ever did a noticeable cover of such a widely beloved song except the official wannabe-group A*Teen is not that no one dares, but no one is given permission or that they just won't bother.

The whole point is that Happy New Year, the international hit song, is listened to and adored by people who would not understand most of the lyric. Hence, few ever know or care for more than half of the chorus. The truth is Happy New Year only fits to be sung once, in one new year only: the new year of 1990. The year number, "the end of '89," is in the third verse of the lyric, but people's attention to words meaning doesn't span that further down. The song freezes in time, and replaying it over the years is like wearing a shirt with a year number on it over time. The English-speaking world fails to point that out, because the song is unpopular to them. They who get it probably cannot stand how much truth it says about the celebration and the blue of the New Year

The nature of the New Year blue is not anxiety for the unknown. More than ever, people want to be positive and optimistic at the launch of new year, and they are. They have every reason to: January, new beginning, second chance. The unpredictable are beautifully mysterious at this magical moment. Perhaps, the New Year blue is more rooted in nostalgia for the past. Hence, when we raise a cup of kindness, we drink for the old time, for auld lang syne. The New Year blue is about the inevitability of time, like that of strands of gray hair. The New Year blue is the little guilt for what belongs to the old days, like the guilt for an old toy. The New Year blue is the blue at a happy ending, when we're once again goalless and purposeless. When a future goal is already in time past, all efforts that led toward it feel like a big waste. Finishing a tough project in a class where you really care to learn, get an A, and realize the fun lay all in the process of doing it.

Look who's talking in Forrest Gump. Only people who dearly wish to let go of the past can feel only excitement, looking forward to a new year.

Seems to me now
That the dreams we had before
Are all dead, nothing more
Than confetti on the floor

Why does the blue happens as the clock turns 12 at midnight on New Year's Eve? It's because we make the moment so symbolic. A turning page. A new chapter. A new beginning. Some kind of a cut-off point, a separation from the past. The only way to suppress the blue is fixing our gazes forward. Make new plans for the new person you have become over the old year. Carry on the legacy of the past.

And he thinks he'll be okay
Dragging on, feet of clay
Never knowing he's astray
Keeps on going anyway...

New Year is not naturally hopeful. We have to try the hardest , as if walking with feet of clay, to make meaning of it. That's why we make resolutions. They give us something to look forward to, hope for, to avoid being consumed by the New Year blue, even if we don't keep them afterward. New Year resolutions are not made in a moment of high spirit. Only a goal in mind, however dim and distant, gives meaning to what we are doing at hands. Even if such goal is never reached, or in itself unattainable, or astray, it really doesn't matter.

            May we all have our hope, our will to try
            If we don't we may as well lay down and die.

At the end of the blue, it is still a Happy New Year. And people will only remember the chorus.
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