But Janus is above all a god of beginnings, and the very
word evokes two faces, the near-paradox of anchoring
something new in something old, acknowledging the past
only to break with it. "Beginnings imply undertaking, entering
a field, intervention, and therefore the self-conscious,
reflective marking of a difference." Thus writes one literary
critic, David Scott, of another, the late Edward Said, whose
book Beginnings examines the phenomenon of beginnings
in the context of literary narrative, the chain of creation
linking author, narrator and protagonist. To begin implies,
often if not always, to begin again, to acknowledge in order
to eradicate: ambivalent legacies, false starts, unhappy
endings.
Anyone who has embarked on a course of psychotherapy
is acquainted with the Sisyphean difficulty of change, the
psychological struggle, the seeming conundrum, of truly
understanding that our past is over. So chained are we to
the past imperfect we often fail to see our essential freedom
from it, that it is done, achieved, finished, and that we may
do more than amend—we can create, which strangely
enough, is easier.
Let 2014 be the year of living, not dangerously but
adventurously, of magical doing, not magical thinking. Let
us not sourly abstain, but drink a robust and reasonable
toast to the doing, to the immeasurable blessing of now. H
HYLAND
