Just Before Midnight desperation of Awaiting the New Year

There is no desperation like the desperation of single adult individuals still awake at 11:45 p.m. December 31 as they ponder whether it could mean "bad luck" for them if they were, in fact, completely alone at midnight.

"Might it be a 'good omen' for me if I were to drive to the nearest restaurant or nightclub or bar that's open at midnight, and at least go through the motions of expressing camaraderie toward everyone who happens to be there at midnight?"

However, many or most or all of those persons are complete strangers. Merely smiling at complete strangers at midnight, as the New Year suddenly arrives, can feel about as superficial as declaring that "because we as consumers chose the same business establishment tonight, this proves that our affinity for each other is deep and profound."

Furthermore, many of the other persons gathered at the same business establishment as yourself in order to celebrate the New Year are, in fact, inebriated. Meeting someone who is drunk at the time is much less likely to result in a lasting friendship---much less a coherent conversation with that person---than if you meet someone who is sober and cheerful and conversationally compatible with you on an in-person basis.

The New Year's celebration also invites inevitable speculation about what percentage of the persons who appear to be the most ecstatic at 12:01 a.m. as the New Year arrives, will, in fact, be waking up with painful hangovers later that morning. And those hangovers all over America may well be the more telling metaphor from it all: the sense of a nationwide hangover from destructive public policies and individuals' destructive lifestyle choices (addiction to illicit drugs and to tattooing and to profane speech, for instance) that rears its ugly head a matter of hours after the seeming collective harmony and gleefulness at midnight.