sinick

I'm not a particularly public person. (Yes, I know I posted this to a blog; stop smirking. This is the exception that proves the rule.) Add to my introversion the Australian disinclination to admit to anything remotely approaching navel-gazing, and this post is probably one-of-a-kind.

But there's something about this time of year - or about this time of life - that demands a moment or two of philosophising.

I was born and raised in a city on the verge of the tropics. Even now, over seven years away from that, there's still something bone-deep in me that's completely thrown by colder places' seasonal variation in length of night and day.

This year, I've taken to getting up about 5:30am and walking in to work (the gym at work opens at 6: I work out, shower, and am at my desk at a convenient hour).

This has sharpened my awareness of the slow turn of the wheel of the seasons: the deepening of the darkness I walk through every morning, the slowing of the first hints of dawn.

I'm not religious; I'm not the credulous type at all (the only reason this journal's not called 'cynic' is that name was already taken). So I'm also not a pagan, but it just makes sense to me on that same bone-deep level, to celebrate - or if not that, then at least to take notice of - the turning of the earth; if only because that's one of the few forces in our lives that truly approaches timelessness.

Tonight is the longest night of the year where I live now, and the shortest night of the year where I was born. Tonight, in my opinion, is the true turning of the year: the death of the old, the birth of the new. All things will pass: this darkness and cold, and summer's light and heat.

Our lives are short: we should revel in them. Carpe diem. Carpe noctem. There's beauty in both, as long as we bother to see it. To me, that's something worth celebrating.