A New Year's Message
ushering out 2021 in a hurry
I was going to link to what I felt were some of best essays from this year, but the archives are right here and no one wants to relive my messy, sad year. We want to be done with 2021, not rehash it.
So I will just take this time to wish you all a happy new year. I know that seems almost futile now; it looks to be another of trying to dodge covid, another year of staying in and cancellations and anxiety. Maybe as 2022 goes on things will get better. You always hope for the light at the end of the tunnel. You hope even harder that light isn’t a train.
We’ll trudge on, going about our daily lives while it feels like the world is imploding around us. We’ll see marriages and birthday, we’ll celebrate anniversaries and holidays. We’ll go to work and see our friends and watch some movies and maybe complete a jigsaw puzzle or two. All the mundane things that happen every year will still happen, regardless of what’s going on around us. We need to live our lives, we need to make them as normal as possible in quite abnormal times.
My wishes for you this year: good health, prosperity, love. I hope you find joy in sunsets and happiness in a good friendship. I want you to look at all the small things that make up our lives and appreciate them for what they are. I want you to feel loved, to feel wanted. I want you to give freely of your own limitless love. I want you to be listened to, to be heard and acknowledged. I want you to feel fulfilled. I want you to sleep soundly at night. I want you to look at the world around you and absorb all the good you can from it while fighting the bad. I want you to be happy.
I know that things don’t magically change when the calendar does. But the new year seems a good a time as any to take stock of our lives and see what we need to push forward, and see what others need from us to make the world a better place for them. Be kind to each other, be free with your love, be gracious and humble and be at peace.
Happy New Year. Be safe. Be sound.