When Harry Met Sally is a fantastic movie starring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal and is a great movie to watch around this time of year. It’s a love story,  of course, but it also encompasses life lessons capped off in the final scene on New Year’s Eve.

Auld Lang Syne is the song typically sung at New Year’s but it also is a metaphor for the entire movie from beginning to end. Auld Lang Syne is translated to mean, “long, long ago” or “days gone by” and becomes a revelation captured just as the ball drops at midnight.

(Spoiler alert! If you haven’t seen the movie, stop reading right now — and watch it).

Harry and Sally meet that first day as they embark on a road trip to New York following college graduation. Let’s use our imaginations and say that first day they meet is the days of our youth. By the end of the movie Crystal and Ryan are married and allegedly going to be spending the rest of their lives together (a true romantic would say they will).

Let’s imagine that time as this coming Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2019.

All the rest of the movie is their life between those dates (and ours).

Now after they meet, Harry and Sally experience a roller coaster of emotions in that short ride across the country as Crystal’s character deflects real-life circumstances with humor while Ryan’s character promotes idealism and optimism. Even their names in the movie (Harry) Burns (negative) and (Sally) Albright (positive) are key elements to describing the kind of people they are.

Harry is callous, persistent and painfully honest in his quest to find true love while Sally is somewhat guarded and rigid in her pursuits. She thinks in her own mind she is happy (when she is with someone), yet her desires and beliefs fail to match her views on romance.

Harry is a realist and isn’t afraid to express how he feels even if what he says hurts other people’s feelings. He feels empty in his relationships and throws women away like they are scraps of trash — probably because he has too high a standard for the “perfect woman”.

It’s amazing but the story depicts how over the course of the next 12 years — though they are separate — they grow closer and closer to each other without even realizing it. How many times do we not see the truth as it sits right in front of our faces? How often do we mistake all we have with all we want?

Harry’s speech to Sally on New Year’s Eve is a perfect example of his realization of the truth he’s had in his hands yet failed to grab hold of.

“I love that you get cold when it’s 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

It’s the moment Harry dumps the past 12 years of their meetings up and mans up to his future. Shedding the past to bathe in the future.

Auld Lang Syne means days gone by and in order for us all to have a New Year’s Eve moment like Harry and Sally, we need to shed the year’s past circumstances and focus on the hope for a brighter future. 

Make Dec. 31, 2019 the day you realize life’s most precious moments have been right before your eyes all along.

Welcome 2020.