This column is being posted within the one-week period of the beginning of 2017 so these thoughts are still valid. After that, all bets are off.
2016 is over. It is a joyous thought shared by many, so I was a bit confused by the mid-December article from Vice.com which advised no one in particular that 2016 should not to be blamed. Vice then went on to provide a multitude of reasons why it was a completely shit year, each event occurring unrelated to each other thereby discrediting any cumulative significance. It was a minor nihilistic wank with a soupçon of absurdism. Blaming 2016 for everything bad that happened, according to them, is ‘weird’.
I disagree. I also sincerely doubt anyone actually visualized 2016 was a sentient creature intent on devouring all that was good. That said, anthropomorphizing a ‘year’ as bad and being glad to see the end of it, well why not?
Attributing powers to inanimate objects or dates (Friday the 13th immediately comes to mind) is a perfectly viable, albeit not scientifically substantiated, inclination. Urban primitive that I am (I know I’m appropriating the name of the former Toronto tattoo parlour of note, but I’m wearing some of their work, so I feel somewhat ok with this), I do it all the time with success. I set up small shrines in my office, stopping short of sacrificing woodland animals. I have little hand-crafted inner city Inuksuks that give me great comfort. Voodoo dolls are a little inelegant for my tastes if only because they lack the necessary aesthetics. And what is a dork shelf if not an alter venerating icons with deep meaning.
The act of doing so has a psychological name: superstitious behavior. It comes as naturally to humans as breathing. BF Skinner pointed this out in 1947 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology when animals (actually, it was pigeons) developed behaviours in an effort to control a specific outcome as a result of accidental juxtapositions between their overt behaviors and the presentation of rewards. Sports fans, a subspecies of H. sapiens sapiens prone to any behaviours that make their teams win, know this works which is why Bud Light recently released an ad campaign (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67gUGnYca3Q) with the tagline “It’s only weird if it doesn’t work.”
I had difficulty understanding 2016. By that I mean that one sees life going in a particular way, factoring in family, friends, health, personal goals, career, good luck and bad luck, an understanding of your field of work, your community and the world in general. I’d absorb every new bit of news and move on, but after a while (like, April), it turned into an endurance test and by mid-summer, a chore. "When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness. a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all," Margaret Atwood wrote in Alias Grace. Sarah Polley used this passage as a preface for her documentary, Stories We Tell. You can’t understand the narrative of chaos without the bookends.
Taking the flying debris of celebrity deaths (for each, I did the inevitable age check), the irrationality of the US election and how to cope with it, adding in whatever personal traumas transpired, and wrapping them up in a tidy package to dispose of on December 31st feels like the only sane thing to do. It offers the illusion of control and renewal and at this point, I’ll buy into the illusion because it’s better than the alternative.
The other way to go is to assess the emotions clinically. Calendar events like anniversaries or birthdays (particularly 0-year birthdays which feel more important that the in-between years) are milestones that you have made it thus far without self-combusting or ending up in prison. These are scattered throughout the year whereas Christmas and the New Year happen for us all at the same time, inspiring the end of the year accounting, the great reckoning and the urge to make resolutions about moving forward.
Given that year-end holidays are not the happiest time of the year- despite how much we’re told they should be- the generally held opinion that suicide rates spike at Christmas is false, but depression abounds. Armchair therapists speculate on the reasons one could be legitimately depressed, yet not one of them stands as a defining explanation. It could be the weather because there nothing like a wrist-slitter of a grey, damp, windy cold day in late December in Canada, but how does that explain depression in sunny California? The death or absence of a loved one during the holidays is absolutely sad, but sometimes it is the living who cause as much pain. The angst of being able to afford the best gifts for your family can be matched by the [first world] anguish of receiving gifts that signal that you are completely misunderstood by those who should know you best. There is the joy of hating the social isolation of New Year’s Eve, the holiday no one can ignore, not even for religious reasons. It’s made worse because everyone asks about what you did at midnight. The reasons go on, but never get you anywhere, except to reassure you that you aren’t the only one who loathes the season and wishes the calendar would just leap from December 19 to January 2nd.
The fun continues into the new year. The first Monday in January is known as Divorce Day to lawyers. Yup, there are herds of people who wait until immediately after the holidays to break the bad news that they are departing a marriage. They do this so they can, ostensibly, preserve the illusion of family, but come onnnnnn, how much fun does that make the holidays.
January 18, the culmination of the depressing 30 day period that leads up to it, is called Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year - and the (rubber science) formula is: [W+(D-d)]xTQ/MxNA – where W is weather, D is debt, d monthly salary, T time since Christmas, Q time since failure of attempt to give something up, M low motivational level and NA the need to take action. Of course this was devised by a publicist (a travel publicist, thankyouverymuch) in an effort to promote mid-winter vacations.
The very good news is that this depression is both predictable and short-lived. People forget that part and think it will go on forever - but it doesn’t. If it does, the issues are something entirely different and there are drugs for that.
For me, there is something about the end of the year that twists me around and makes me take account of the 12 months that came before. If I do not like what I see, I have to answer to myself for the results. If there are problems I can do something about, they become my resolutions. If not, I embrace my inner pigeon, shake my fist at the gods and blame the year.
By the time you finish reading this, the depressing stage of the year will almost be over and the most you’ll have to deal with are the sore muscles you have developed by sticking to your new exercise regime.
Bring it on, 2017. I can handle you.
