New year brings needed hope
Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.
~ Emily Dickinson Writers love to use metaphors and similes to create analogies. So, with all due apologies to grammarians, here’s how I creatively describe the year 2020.
It’s been as pleasant and productive as trying to stomp out a burning bag of dog feces, thrown into a refuse container overflowing with other burning bags, aboard a ship fully loaded with similar cargo, that’s part of a like fleet sailing up the stream of effluence, without a means of propulsion. And there are more ships on the horizon.
Please forgive that unpleasant verbal vomit, but with a new year ahead of us, we somehow need to find a way to put the awful year behind us – even if we’ll carry its baggage well into 2021.
The tunnel is long and dark. Some days, we feel there is no end. We are masked marchers, trudging forward in the darkness. Sometimes, the burden seems too heavy. Our exhaustion makes us stumble or fall.
But we get up to walk forward. There’s a glimmer of hope in the darkness; vaccinations to combat the pandemic have begun. The economic and emotional pain of shutdowns will subside.
Sometimes, hope is before us – if we look for it. The darkest day of the year in 2020, was brightened by the appearance of the “Christmas Star,” the alignment of the planets Jupiter and Saturn. The last time the planets appeared this close, was in 1623. The sun then began its slow journey north and the days will become longer. The message of the star that shone over Bethlehem, is needed more than ever this year.
New Year’s is a popular time for resolutions – January was named after Janus, the Roman god of change and beginnings. His two faces allowed him to look into the past and forward into the future, a transition from one year, to the next.
Robert B. Thomas, the founder of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, called it a time “of leisure to farmers…settle accounts with your neighbors…now having been industrious in the summer, you will have the felicity of retiring from the turbulence of the storm to the bosom of your family.”
My resolutions for 2021, are a reflection of the turbulent reality of 2020, with the perspective of the challenge ahead. I want to be a better husband, a better father and a better person.
For those who need additional motivation, remember, Jan. 1, is the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century. So, goodbye and good riddance to 2020.
Chris Hardie spent more than 30 years as a reporter, editor and publisher. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and won dozens of state and national journalism awards. He is a former president of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association. Contact him at chardie1963@gmail.com.
