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The results of the Kenton Foundation Official Poll are in. It turns out that 78% of United Statesians over the age of seventeen spend New Year’s Eve totally drunk. And that’s just the people over seventeen.

These same people, in their drunken bliss, make all sorts of grand resolutions about how they’re going to make their life better in the New Year. Naturally, they universally fail to achieve any of these wonderful improvements. Maybe if everyone just resolved to get drunk next New Year’s, they’d all find their resolutions to be wildly successful!

We might say that we get drunk in order to forget the past year and the subtle sense of disappointment it left us with. Or maybe we just see New Year’s as the King of All Fridays – the ultimate ‘end of the week’, when we can finally rest, get blasted, and sleep in until dinner-time the next day.

Of course, since this site is widely known as a Great Spiritual Resource, we can’t leave it at that. We have to look deeper into the essence of drunkenness, and unveil it for what it truly is.

The thing about getting drunk is that it lets us forget ourselves for a while. We find ourselves taking everything a little less seriously, and stop worrying so much about what other people think. For some of us, it’s as close to enlightenment as we’ll ever get.

We can sometimes get mad at the drunkards, because they’re wasting their lives. While they’re busy staggering about, puking, or spending taxpayers’ money in rehab, we’re busy doing much more productive things, like spending all of our youth scrabbling about for little green pieces of paper and then giving those pieces of paper away so that we can go back and try to collect more pieces of paper.

All you have to do is step back into the perspective of an Infinite Universe, and you can see that there’s not a whole lot of difference between the drunk and the responsible paper-earner. After all, anyone with even a little bit of observational power can plainly see that the human race is due to go extinct within the next two hundred years, so what’s all the fuss about, anyway?

But seriously, folks. It’s plain to see that people are getting drunk in a desperate and misguided attempt to be in the Now. It’s pretty pitiful to watch, actually. All you have to do is drink this magic potion, and for a while you don’t worry about anything, everyone looks attractive, and you think you’re the funniest person on earth. Other drunk people even laugh at your jokes!

You could say that all of our life’s efforts are like this. Merely the ineffective actions of human beings who want, for just one precious moment, to step outside the insanity and to catch a glimpse of the infinite peace, love, and humor of Life.

Getting drunk is nice because it’s just temporary. Then we can get back to the business of worrying about our self-image and how many little green pieces of paper we have. We all have an inkling that there is something else – something just outside our view – something that would let us see life in all its glorious passion and beauty. But that’s a little intimidating. Surely it’s not for us. We’re not worthy. That’s for people who meditate for 20 years straight, or chant some sutra fifty-three times a day.

For us? Well, let’s just wait for the New Year, get completely plastered, and decide for the umpteenth time how we can make our lives finally work out next year.

Maybe, just maybe, we could try a different sort of resolution this time. Maybe, this year, we should resolve something that would truly change our life. Let’s resolve to do Absolutely Nothing.

We’ll discard this crazy suggestion, of course. Ignore it. Senseless Zen-babble.

But your God-Nature is playing a little joke on you. In fact, your God-Nature is downright laughing at you, because it knows that doing Absolutely Nothing would sweep you straight out of all this craziness into a perfect realization of who you really are.

But let’s face it. Our God-Nature is just out to have its version of a fun time. In fact, all of our God-Natures are probably spending their whole time drunk, because they know that every minute is New Years’ somewhere in this universe. They’re doing their best to keep you in the dark so that this strange and wondrous game can continue on.

Ah well. Enough eternal secrets divulged for one night. Might as well go pour myself a glass of champagne.

Happy New Year!

Toasting to Life,

Kenton