Happy New Year! I
hope that all of you enjoyed the holidays.
Mine was lovely in spite of not receiving the World Peace I've been
asking for since I was sixteen. I mean,
what the hell, Santa?
Anyhoo, 2013 is off to a great start so far: the kids are back at school, the house is
quiet once again, and my sanity is mostly intact. It feels good to have just the usual stuff to
stress about rather than the dozens of additional worries that the holiday
season ushers in.
I always have such high hopes for each new year. Each January 1st brings with it a feeling of
bright and shiny optimism, bursting with potential. Yeah, that old year really let us down (I'm
talking to you, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012) but this one, THIS new year, is
going to be when things finally turn around.
So, before the alcohol wears off, er, I mean, before the disillusionment
sets in, and while my cynicism is still sleeping, I'd like to throw a few of my
wishes for 2013 out into the universe and see if they stick:
- For starters, can
this Great Recession/Depression/Whatever please end? It's like an uninvited guest who keeps
messing up the place and refusing to leave.
While the politicians remain beholden to their own agendas, so many of us remain
forgotten and continue to struggle. Here
in America, we shouldn't have to choose between paying the electric bill and
buying food after working a full week.
We shouldn't be living one illness away from financial ruin or
homelessness. Something is fundamentally
wrong with an economy that is content to allow the majority of its population
to subsist as long as the stock market keeps humming along. I pray that this is finally the year that
people will matter more than politics or profits.
- Speaking of
politics, can Congress please just do its job without reducing every single
item of legislation to a whiny-baby partisan fight? If Moms ran the country, we'd know what to do
to break the stalemate: we'd count to
three, and if the fighting continued, we'd take away their video games and send
them all to the Naughty Chair. The
privilege of representing the American people should be reserved for those who
will honor it and who will work for the good of the people - ALL of the people,
not just the wealthy, powerful, and
influential ones.
- How about a year
with no natural disasters? Certainly, we've
paid our dues in 2012 with wildfires, tornadoes, floods, and hurricanes. We haven't even gotten all of those sorted
out yet, so a boring year weather-wise would be much appreciated. How lovely it would be to have a rainstorm
just be a rainstorm and nothing more!
- Lastly, can we
please at least move closer to that World Peace thing? Maybe try diplomacy a bit more and violence a
lot less? Perhaps a good place to start
would be by being kinder toward one another.
We gain nothing by magnifying our differences rather than embracing our
similarities. We're all members of the same grand club known as the human race. It would help to remember that we're all just
doing the best that we can even if it doesn't always look that way.
Wishing everyone a happy, healthy, peaceful, prosperous, and
disaster-free 2013.
