Here’s to fresh start

Fall marks official start of what feels like new year

Made any new year’s resolutions? Going to join the gym, learn Spanish lessons, give up smoking? Drink less? Yeah, that’s supposed to be four months from now, but contrary to what the calendar and tradition say, we all know the new year begins the Tuesday after Labour Day.

In case you’ve been having so much fun this summer that you didn’t notice the bird of time has but a little way to fly, it’s this Tuesday.

We know from the iron-clad conditioning imprinted on our nervous system from all those years of going back to school — and re-inforced upon becoming parents — the real new year looms.

Even though September is often the kindest month the Okanagan, we know in our hearts that summer is over — even though it won’t be official until Sept. 21. Nobody on the road, Nobody on the beach I feel it in the air The summer’s out of reach Empty lake, empty streets The sun goes down alone We have one more weekend of abandon, of carefree existence but when Tuesday morning rolls off the calendar, and we roll out of bed, we will gird our loins, adjust our facial armour and head back into the fray or, as Shakespeare wrote in Henry V, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more .... ”

He was talking about war and it sure seems that life sometimes is warfare, and summer is a truce from our normal life, no matter what we call it.

The start of the new year will be a time of excitement, some fear, even dread because it’s also a time of firsts as school starts and college and university are about to.

And for first timers — in kindergarten or first year at college or university — it really is a new year beyond anything that Jan. 1 brings. It’s a new year, a new world, a new beginning, as it is maybe on a lesser scale for all of us.

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end,” said that wise Roman, Seneca.

And the almost as wise writer Rainer Maria Rilke had similar sentiments: “And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been.”

And in our excitement or our dread, we must not, of course, forget that Labour Day is about more than a day off and a chance to contemplate what was and what will be.

It is symbolic of new beginnings for workers, one that we tend to take for granted or to simpy forget.

Labour Day has been celebrated in Canada on the first Monday in September since the 1880s. The origins can be traced to December 1872 when a parade was staged in support of the Toronto Typographical Union's strike for a 58-hour work-week.

Now, about those resolutions. Take some time Monday to come up with a few.

— Ross Freake, Kelowna Daily Courier