This time between Christmas and New Year’s Day is when we traditionally look back over the past 12 months and set our sights on accomplishing what we may accomplish over the next 12 months.
I looked back in the journals and saw that, much like this year, I had my mind on the crazy idea that peace on Earth is possible. Among the things I wrote in the last week of last year was:
“Maybe 2022 was not the year when everything changed — but some things changed.
“Inch by inch, bird by bird, soul by soul, not all at once but slowly, the world has become a better place than it was one, 10, 50, and 100 years ago.
“Maybe 2023 will be the year we finally accept that and are grateful.
“Or maybe the calendar doesn’t matter, and you and I should simply do what we can to make this day better than yesterday was, day by day.”
John Lennon, among other folks, once said, “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” No sooner had the Brave New Year of 2023 begun when my life partner, Red, went into the hospital Tuesday, Jan. 3, beginning a journey that would end six months later on a hospice bed and changing all of my plans for the rest of my own life.
My outlook on the sanctity of life was altered by her journey, and I am flabbergasted more than ever by the prevailing culture’s disdain for the value of human life. Our games and entertainment are rife with images of lives being casually eliminated, points awarded to the most prolific killers. No matter that every life represents years of painstaking education, growth and experience — a universe encased in every body.
As I muddle through what exactly I hope to do with the next 366 days — it’s a leap year, don’t you know — and if I am blessed to live through all of those days — I hope that by the end of 2024, I will have convinced at least a few other souls that we will all be happier if we strive to love one another rather than finding fault, casting stones and aspersions, and firing missiles at each other.
How specifically do I go about this task? That’s an interesting question, and I hope and pray some answers come to me as I go along.
