It's About Time

I don’t tend to spend much time looking back at a past year. Nor do I make new year’s resolutions. It doesn’t usually work for me. Instead, I tell myself to do better and be happier. However, I do feel it’s vital to celebrate the passing of a year. Birthdays are like that for me as well. It’s important to mark time and look at where you’ve been and where you may be going, and then just get on with life.

2009 has been an especially tumultuous year. Everyone knows and feels that. A new president. High unemployment. Health care debates. The fight for gay marriage. Environmental disintegration. The continuing war in Afghanistan. Etc., etc., etc. It’s a lot to deal with. My own personal list includes more than a year out of work, uprooting to my home town, and just generally shaking up life.

I think it’s safe to say that 2009 sucked the proverbial big one. I sent out an email holiday greeting this season which started by simply saying “Abominable 2009?” The response was a whole hearted yes! I have observed the aimlessness of friends. Floating along in a purgatory of not knowing which way to go and afraid to make a move—a collective unconscious of stagnation. But I believe that many people have hope for 2010. Everyone wants to just move on. To work and get life back on track. Enjoy ourselves. That may be the trick. To just decide that our lives will be better and go with it. But we have to move on in a different way. The world is changing in leaps and bounds. We have to figure out a way to grab on and go with it or be left behind.

Everyone is probably now familiar with 2012. The Mayans had an interesting belief that the world will end when their calendar did (December 21 to be exact). If you saw the movie then you may think it all ends in one big spectacular special effects disaster. But I would like to think that it will be a shift in consciousness. I’m hoping for that. As the world speeds up. As natural disasters continue to pile up. As weather systems go wacky and social upheaval builds, there has to be a breaking point. After all, how much Jon and Kate can we stomach—or care about? Do we need to know how many women Tiger has slept with? The earth can only take so much. A population can only take so much. A shift is necessary.

I question myself almost daily. Where do I want to be? What do I want to do? Maybe it’s just too much thinking. I’m overloading myself with self-imposed self-examination. I realize, though, that I am not in the boat alone and we’re all heading en masse to some sort of solution. But then the question is, how can I make the world better? I think it’s more than just recycling ones cans and newspapers or buying a fuel efficient car or light bulb. We have to recycle our thinking towards a more sustainable viewpoint.

I was in Paris last September and attended a small dinner party. The party was populated by an Italian, a German, a Brazilian, an Australian, and of course, American and French. The inevitable subject of health care came up. All were perplexed and appalled by the fact that a person could be denied care in the US. They (with the exception of the dumbfounded Americans) just didn’t get it. Time and again during the health care town hall meetings over the summer, I heard that people didn’t feel that they should be responsible for one another. This was my answer to this diverse dinner group. Americans don’t want to help their neighbors. They all looked at me in blank wonder. I was embarrassed for my country. Still am sometimes. I have a hard time comprehending when someone tells me they don’t believe in climate change. Didn’t they notice a chunk of the polar ice cap recently broke off and floated into oblivion? Didn’t they notice that their flowers bloom just a little bit earlier every spring or that plant and animal species are disappearing? Haven’t they heard that melanoma is rampant? No? Really?

What are people thinking? Or are they not thinking at all? I find the self absorption astounding. I just don’t get it. How long can this go on before it all goes to hell? I sometimes think we are there or are just steps away. But we still have just under 3 years until the world ends. It could happen. Maybe, hopefully we will wake up by then or we’ll just keep shopping 'til extinction. Either by choice or by force something’s going to happen.

If I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that everything is constantly changing. Thoughts, decisions, emotions, and economies never remain the same. Geography wears away and cities can't stop growing. Nothing is permanent. And now the calendar is about to change once again, thank god. 2010 is almost here and I find myself looking back more than I ever do. Will I celebrate this year? Damn right. Even though January 1st will essentially be the same as December 31st, I expect a tiny conscious shift and we will be one day closer to our destination. I will raise my glass and say goodbye to this challenging, exhausting year. As the clock strikes 12 and the champagne touches my lips, I will take a step forward into a new year and just get on with it.

Happy New Year!