Sharing A Cuppa

Many voices will sing Auld Lang Syne tonight. Our local news station has just aired a programme which demonstrated that few people actually know the words, fewer still understand what they mean, but several admitted by the time they are singing it - they don't actually care much about either. I admit that I don't know the words ... and the words that I do know aren't from the original Robbie Burns poem but are, probably to the horror of the Scots, translated into English.

I remember being a kid hearing the song for the first time and asking what "Auld Lang Syne" meant and getting little in the way of an answer, something along the line of "it's just a song' and a clop across the ear for asking annoying questions. With the advent of the computer, of course, I've looked up the song and read it in translation, it's quite lovely.

There was a line in the song that captured my imagination, even as a young boy with stinging ears, that line still does the same:

"We'll drink a cup of kindness yet"

And that, dear readers, is my hope for you and your new year, me in mine and for the world in general. I hope that when it's needed, the cup of kindness will be there for you, for me, for all. I hope further that we all recognise that each of us has the capacity to offer a cup of kindness to those who need it, when they need it, no matter why they need it. We don't have to run and knock on God's door to borrow a cup of kindness, we can fill it at will, once the choice is made. And we can fill that up over and over and over again.

So, may we all share, in this coming year, a cup of kindness yet.