Keeping it Real

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Of all the holidays, I have always found the celebration of the New Year to have the least appeal. Maybe this is because of its proximity to Christmas. The New Year’s holiday seems drab to me. It does not offer much. Oh, there is always a football game or two. There are chips and dip on the coffee table. Millennials get to watch Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and wonder who Dick Clark is. Then, of course, there is that smattering of automatic weapon fire at midnight. But none of this is particularly unusual. The truth is, we pretty much have it all year round, including the weaponry.

Some people look forward to the New Year because they see in it a new beginning. The New Year is a blank page upon which they can write anything they wish. For some reason, it always speaks to me of the end of things. That is especially true this year because it marks my last year as a faculty member at the college where I teach. I will be retiring at the end of the school year.

When I asked one of my retired friends what the experience was like he said, “It’s like death. It just goes on and on.” I don’t believe he meant it to sound as depressing as it did. What he was really saying was that retirement is like a permanent vacation. At least, I hope that’s what he was saying. But to tell you the truth, I’m also finding it hard to talk to people about my impending retirement in a way that doesn’t sound depressing to them. If I mention it, they respond with a note of dismay. “You can’t retire,” they tell me, employing the same tone of voice people use for those who have just been diagnosed with a serious illness. “Everybody’s got an expiration date,” I say.

Some people (my children and my wife) have told me that this is a morbid reply. I thought it was realistic. Over the years I’ve found that many people confuse realism with morbidity. “You’re just a ‘glass-half-empty’ kind of guy,” one of my optimistic friends said to me not long ago. “No,” I replied patiently, “I am just a realist.”

I must admit that realists see the world differently from optimists. A realist watching Adam fall into sin in the Garden of Eden says, “Oh crap, we’re all dead now.” An optimist says, “At least we can have apple pie while we wait.”
Optimists are chronically enthusiastic. It is one of the things that makes them so irritating. “Dial it down” I want to say. “Don’t you know that there is a galaxy heading in our direction that will crash into the Milky Way and send the earth flying into interstellar space?”

They think I am being allegorical. No, I am not. I am being literal. It’s what realists do. They keep it real. There is a galaxy headed our way that will smash into the Milky Way and destroy the earth. We’ve only got about eight billion years left. I know that this is true because I read it on the Internet today.

The Bible says that when King Hezekiah got sick to the point of death, the prophet Isaiah came to visit him. “This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.” Despite the source, Hezekiah refused to accept such a pessimistic prognosis. He turned his face to the wall and prayed. “Remember, O Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.” God sent the prophet back to Hezekiah to say that the king could have fifteen more years. To an optimist, that would be good news. A realist would start counting them down.

Sometime after this the king of Babylon sent emissaries to Hezekiah. He had recovered by then and was happy to show them around the palace. He showed them everything. His bank account. His IRA. The monster truck in his garage. He showed them all his stuff. There wasn’t anything that he didn’t show them.

“Who were those guys?” Isaiah the prophet wanted to know after Hezekiah had walked them to the door. “Just some guys from Babylon” Hezekiah said. “What did you show them?” the prophet asked. “Everything!” the king said cheerily.

“You know what the Lord told me?” Isaiah said. “The time is going to come when everything in your palace, and all that your fathers have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left. And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood, that will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.”

“That’s great!” Hezekiah said. “It means that there will be peace for the rest of my life!”

That’s optimism for you.