Spoiler alert. You can stop writing 2022 on your checks now.
If all the retail shelves stuffed with Valentine hearts and candy are any indication, New Year’s confetti is in the rear view mirror. We’ve said ‘Bye Felicia’ to the old and and opened the door to another 365 of mess and magic. We get another shot at being our best selves and we can’t afford to walk without intention – but, in spite of ourselves, we will.
Minutes count down each New Year’s Eve and days tick swiftly from the calendar until another year ends, like Ground hog day, since the world began. And, it will rinse repeat each year, long after we are gone. Years go on. Life goes on. And time teaches us how to live with the worst, as we try to make each day the best. Married, widowed, single, black, white, sick, well, gay, straight, time marches on for everyone. All we can do is hang on for the ride, as we do the best we can, alone — and together.
As the new calendar yawns empty before us, do we regard it with hope, or dread; wonder or resignation? None of us have a clue what we will be looking back on this time next year. But with any luck, whatever life throws our way, we’ll have the chops to deal with it, better and stronger.
“What the new year brings to you depends a great deal on what you bring to it.” Vern McClellan
We can help squeeze the best out of this new calendar. Going forward, we can bring awareness, increased sensitivity, understanding and, if we’ve been paying attention, some timely fire in our bellies to stand up for what’s right. On our watch, virulent rhetoric has been seemingly accepted, greed has proliferated, politics teeter on dangerous historical territories, dividing us all in the process. What if our nation stands up with courage, and unity? What if we thought more about all the peoples across the globe who are terrorized and killed daily in their own lands? What if next year we could say we helped those, even in our own neighborhoods, with food insecurity who can’t make ends meet? What if we took better care of the disabled, and the disenfranchised?
In pretty much any departed year, we’ve seen babies born — and loved ones die. We’ve experienced all the jubilant, terrible, happy, tragic things a year can and does bring. We’ve lived through corruption, secrecy and political insanity that’s divided a country and spins on its crazy track. We’ve lost and won jobs, had reunions and estrangements. A pandemic terrorized and took precious lives, as our morale goes up and down like a roller coaster.
Continue reading “A New Year? Bring it on.”
The Other Shoe 