We’ll be taking a break over the festive season to spend time with our families and friends. As we close out what’s been an interesting year, I couldn’t help thinking of the words of Robert Burns, which are sung badly by many of us as we say goodbye to the old year and welcome in the new one.
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?”
These lines used to bother me. Did I really want to forget my old acquaintances and never think of them again? Even for ‘old times sake’? But I reconciled it by choosing to believe that Burns actually meant acquaintance to mean ‘events’ or ‘experiences’ rather than ‘people I know’. Even then, did I really want to forget those experiences?
There are certainly plenty of things that happened in 2018 that we all might want to forget: the childish twitter rants of a certain US president, the ongoing train wreck that is Brexit, the current split in the Belgian government over the UN migration pact.
But there were also good times that I would like to remember. We celebrated our first anniversary in our new offices, my brother’s 20th wedding anniversary, and my mother-in-law’s 90th birthday.
Rather than forgetting all these things, I prefer to think that Burns just meant that we need to put the events of the last year behind us, both the good and the bad. As we step into 2019, let’s wipe the slate clean and look forward to what the new year will bring. So from all of us at Pyramidion, we wish you and your family, friends, and colleagues, a happy, healthy and successful new year!
And we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne.
