Firecrackers, fireworks, celebration, champagne toasts, or perhaps a quiet evening with family around the fire, looking back on the year and imagining the one to come. Whatever the setting, at this special time of saying good-bye to part of our lives, we long for life’s energy to shine as brightly as the fireworks themselves. And if we’re not celebrating, we still crave that burst of life because it is an antidote for the death of an entire year. We need something to compensate for all our losses and to distract us from the irreversible ending that will occur tonight, and all losses of the year that will take its last breath tonight. We need something to give us hope… hope that life will go on, that our life will go on. This night can be a lonely night, even if we are with people, so, some of us may find the unbridled life force by watching the teeming crowds in Times Square.