It’s time for celebration!  Time for looking back at the old year and searching ahead to the new one.  Time for planning and hoping and remembering and forgetting.  And if you’re lucky, most of the forgetting you do will be about what you did at the party on New Years Eve.  Why did you do that?  You’re old enough to know better by now!

Yes, celebrate the fact that another cycle in the life of this planet, in which you have a tiny, miniscule, almost worthless, dust-speck sized part, is gone.  So far, 17% of this century is gone (you have to count the zero, 2000, too, ya’know) and you know hardly anything about it.  For instance, do you know what happened on September 31, 2007?  Of course you don’t, because there aren’t 31 days in September.  And even if there were, you wouldn’t know anyway!  And why not!?  Because the people who were involved, no matter what their names were or how much money they pilfered, still had tiny, miniscule, almost worthless, dust-speck sized parts in the overall picture of the planet…and some of them are probably dead, anyway.

To further press my point, let’s take one of those really big group pictures – say,    a satellite photo of North America.  Can you find your Uncle Bob in this picture?  I thought not.  Very little importance there, is there?

On the other hand, perhaps it’s a good indication that the importance you have – and yes, your Uncle Bob, too – is due to the part you have as a portion of the WHOLE.  As a part of your neighborhood, your community, your state, your country and even the world… Even though we couldn’t get everyone into the one satellite photo.  Because of the round planet thing, I mean – not because they were out of town or sick on picture day.

“Sure,” you say, “but what about those famous people in the movies and magazines and the ones who cook on those TV shows?  They’re important, right?”

Well, you’re right in a way.  But we make these people important.  And mostly, we do so because we, too, are tiny, miniscule, almost worthless, dust-speck sized parts of the planet who have no sense whatsoever!  What are these folks going to do for us after a cataclysmic event?  The kind of inevitable thing made obvious in all those overly serious ‘60s apocalyptic thriller movies… you know, Oliver Stone training films.  They could organize roving cooking shows to teach what’s left of humanity how to make easy roast duck with a delectable crispy orange skin.  These would be the traveling minstrels of the day, going from town to town putting on shows for food, much like the guy playing saxophone on the street corner for tips.

“Okay,” inquirest thou.  (Sorry, I needed filler)  “How about the important people we were taught about in those really boring history classes in school?”

Excellent question, though I noticed you didn’t mention any specific examples because you were mostly dozing during history class.  These people were and are actually important in their society, which, as it turns out by extension, is our society.  You will notice, however, as our current society changes, our view of these people changes in turn.  Take Thomas Jefferson, for illustration.  He was one of the founders of the United States of America, author of the Declaration of Independence and a member of Congress, though the latter shouldn’t be held against him.  A great thinker in the betterment of the common man or, more precisely, of man in common.  Today we have heard argument that he deserves no notoriety because he owned slaves.  Granted, now days we understand slavery, by its very nature, to be an evil construct against the liberty of man and mankind itself.  At the time, however, it was a widely held and accepted belief and his work with, and treatment of slaves and slavery was quite progressive within that society.  Still, a portion of current society would have us delete Jefferson’s importance.  Well, if it weren’t for that big rock face thing.

Or what about Vladimir Lenin?  His theory was for ALL people to be equal.  The idea was noble, though the execution (poor choice of words, considering his successor) was poorly done.

We can see by these examples that society can change and cause even truly important people to lose importance.

That’s because we gave them the importance, just the same as we gave importance to Paris Hilton, or any one of the Kardashians or Justin Beiber, for God’s sake!  These are important like a car wreck…  It really has nothing to do with us, but we can’t help staring when we go past.

Truly important people in the world, while also essential in a societal way, are regular people of history and pre-history.  Average Joe and Jane Cro-Magnon or even those poor neighbors from the wrong (as it turns out) side of the tracks, the Neanderthal family, all going about their day to day business of gathering food by farming, hunting or scavenging.  The people who made tools like stone arrowheads, bronze axes or cotton gins – though I, personally, prefer the flavor of gin made with juniper berries.  These people, Eli Whitney notwithstanding, may not have been important by the current definition of the word but they have given us knowledge and understanding.  By going about their daily chores of survival they have left us evidence, usually in some type of container made of some type of clay pottery, I think, of how we have gotten to this really screwed up place where we have nothing to worry about but really unimportant, important people.  These early peoples have given us insight into the former use, or what some in today’s society would call misuse, of this planet of which we are celebrating another cycle.

All in all, it should help you feel much more important.  Even if you were in the wrong hemisphere for the group photo.

Oh, and about those currently important people who have names (not a big deal) or money (nice to have, to be sure), keep in mind that their importance is STILL a tiny, miniscule, almost worthless, dust-speck sized blip in the course of a year on the planet.

And if that doesn’t help, bury a pottery-shielded time capsule that describes their Butt-headedness in great detail!

And have a Happy New Year!