Beginning, Again

January 1st. The first day of a new year. My first official act of 2022 was to look at an enormous bug on the kitchen floor, cast about wildly in my brain for a solution, and then turn off the kitchen light and walk away. 

I’ll deal with that later.

I have some ambivalence about end-of-year roundups that lean solely on stats. Invariably the posts I care the most about don’t end up with the most clicks. That’s why I deliberately made a list of the issues I cared most about (and wrote the most about) when this day rolled around last year. Not the pieces with the most hits. 

In 2021, the piece I probably cared the most about and that also had wide readership was one that I would rather not have written. It was a remembrance of Michael McCall, written on the occasion of his untimely passing. 

Imagination and Joy

I wish that imagination and joy were as contagious as what we’ve been enduring the last few years. 

As far as contemplating a new year is concerned, I discovered exactly what I wanted to say in a post I wrote on Inauguration Day, 2021:

We must have the capacity to want good for others as well as ourselves. We need leaders who put that goodness into policy decisions. We need laws that establish a commitment to basic human decency and caring as key components of how our country works. National or local, the goal must be the same.

Most of all, we need to challenge at every turn the notion that goodness is scarce and must be hoarded to assure its proper use. It is, in fact, that very notion which limits and chokes goodness down to nothing but a commodity to be bought and sold. The last four years are proof of that. It is ugly and it has been deeply damaging to our country.

Goodness matters: without it the world crumbles. Believe it. Act on it. Share generously. Nothing you do today and in all the days going forward will have more impact on the world around you.

May this day be safe, and joyful, and a truly good beginning for us all.

I think that says it all. Let there be health, and joy, and let goodness be shared freely.  

Happy New Year.