There’s a unique perspective that you can only really get from the last day of the year. In terms of summing up the efforts, joys and travails of the year that is winding down, it’s the single best vantage point. There are, as always, a couple of caveats.

First thing, most of us don’t actually take the time to do this. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” according to Socrates, but you have to remember that he lived in a much slower world. He didn’t have a constantly-beeping cell phone or a jammed email inbox to deal with. We have our lives now, after all, and the constant noise that living brings tends to pull our focus elsewhere. And the other thing is that it’s just another day, when it’s all said and done. It really is. I’ve always believed that any day can be New Year’s Day. Maybe it really isn’t all that special.

It remains, however, that this is the last day of 2021, as designated by your calendar and mine. If there’s anything left to get done, your time to do it is slipping away; if not, it might be worth a look at the year that’s passed, just for the learning that’s in it. And, if you can manage the time, it would be good to look ahead as well, if for no other reason than it may give you an idea of when you’ll need to brace yourself.