Is This Year Over Yet?

We have a little of bit of everything and all the drama lined up for a brand new end of the year. We’re invited to a wedding to close this year on a positive note and another wedding to welcome the New Year happily. To complete the circle of life, we have dreaded funerals ahead, as well as anticipated births. And that’s just what we know.

Looking around circles of friends and family, the mosaic of life cannot be more perfect. Some are up, others down, a few are struggling, another few are flying over the rainbow; the majority is simply happy to have their heads above water, content to have the basics; bread, a roof over their head and someone to hug.

Then at the level of local and world affairs, we wait for the troublemakers to keep us on our toes, the jokers to keep us entertained and the media to either make sense or make a blunder of it all. I wonder if telling stories of tragedies and reporting the news make things better or a lot worse. Examples of the former are scarce while proofs of the latter are abound.

2013 leaves us a lot worse than when it arrived. If an alien population looked down on us and saw how our small world is saying goodbye to this year, we would look stingy, insensitive, cruel, inhabiting oversized bodies, while growing extremely small brains. An alien looking at us will discover quickly that we are selfish, greedy and constantly in search of conflict.

Of course, a few people will look too busy trying very hard to do the right thing, but it will be obvious that they are too small to make a difference; their voices too faint in comparison to those with loud-speaking propagandists and guns.

We join the organized chaos of life. We go with its ebb and flow, and still dream of a better tomorrow, a kinder humanity, and a fair course of action where all will have their Happy Ending. Not happy in the fictional sense like in fairy tales, nor happy as in how politicians and their cronies try to convince us. Rather, happy because everyone has what they need to be the best they can be and has equal opportunities to achieve the best they can, and celebrate as hard as they wish and when it is time to die, do so in peace.