I was eight when I first heard Boney M's Holiday songs. I've heard each of them a thousand times now, but one of them that instantly stuck with me was Auld Lang Syne. More so because I had no idea what it meant. No one at home seemed to be able to tell me. And since my only link to the outside world was Doordarshan and Akashvani, I had to learn it like one of those romantic spanish phrases, like Formas de Amor, like Besame Mucho, ones you never understood but just sounded cool when put in song.
And then I grew up and finally got to know what the words meant. It didn't really make much sense though. Old times' sake. "Should old acquaintance be forgot, for auld lang syne"? Shouldn't you rather be remembering your old buddies, for old times' sake? Someone else told me it just meant "a long long time ago". Mm, that made sense, I thought. And so that's what it meant for a long, long time.
After school you grow up a whole different way. The song remained forgotten for years. Life's what happens to you when you grow up, I've heard. Heck, no kidding. When I heard it again, almost twenty years after I first learnt to say the phrase, it wasn't so "senseless" anymore.
For the sake of some of the best times you've had, you have to let go of the past.
