Pity the Fool

 With all the family gatherings that seem to be mandatory at this time of the year, many of us will find occasion to envy the orphan.
 Upon reflection, when calm and rational thought is, once again, possible, we find instead that we must indeed pity him. For, though he is spared the gift lists and family obligations, he must face the end of the old year and the beginning of the new without any assistance in the discovery and cataloguing of all of his failures and shortcomings.
 Can any one of us, surfeited with kin, imagine the utter desolation and loneliness of seeing in the new year without such a catalogue?
 To the orphan, the coming year could possibly be a tabula rasa on which he must tread without guidance or direction. He might, indeed, find that he is heading in directions, and down roads he never knew existed. He may discover, at the end of that year, that he has travelled to places unimaginable the year before, and re-made his life totally anew.
 As I said, we must pity the orphan.