Auld Lang Syne -Dougie MacLean (With Lyrics-English Translation)12/31/2022 update in description

Update December 31, 2022 (Tonga Standard Time): I created this post 11 years ago. (CLICK ON "Show More" for the Annual Update!) Thank you everyone who chooses to stop by and share in this global community to ring in the new year together. I continue to be deeply humbled and profoundly grateful. Thank you for 11 years of well wishes and comments. I actually read them all.

This year’s update is dedicated to my father who passed in July 2022. He was that “man in the arena” but brought thoughtfulness and compassion to the fight, spending himself in a worthy cause. I was blessed to have him as my father, my teacher and my example.

New Year’s Eve is a moment to reflect upon the year that has passed and the hopes we place in the year to come.

2022 was filled with both individual and global challenges such as the war in Ukraine, the continued COVID-19 pandemic, deeply felt political division, global inflation, and unprecedented extreme weather events from floods, earthquakes, snowstorms to heat waves. But we can also choose to look for the positives and be grateful for what we have and what we hold dear. That could be a baby’s first steps or meeting a long strived for personal goal. Some global positive milestones in 2022: Japan’s largest combined offshore wind and power storage facility became operational off the coast of Ishikari Bay in Hokkaido; Centuries after losing nearly all of their land to the state of New York, the Onondaga Nation’s indigenous people see the return of 1,000-acres of their original territory; Community-based seed banks in Nepal help conserve native varieties of food crops with the establishment of seed banks across the country; NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date.

Auld Lang Syne has stayed in our collective consciousness for over 200 years because it is about connection with others. The kind of connection that binds you to someone forever: loyalty, friendship, kindness, love; even though that person might not be with you anymore. Auld Lang Syne is also about the human spirit’s ability to hope for the future while enduring rough times by remembering the precious human attributes of friendship, connectedness with our fellow humans, kindness, and love.

PLEASE POST TO THE COMMUNITY: We are a global community that shares New Year's Eve through this post. Please post something you are grateful for or some words of encouragement to others. We can lift each other up globally and take a cup of kindness for the days of auld lang syne.

Wishing everyone a blessed, healthy, and peaceful 2023! Live life to the fullest and leave only love in your wake.