Hope in 2021

This year has come to an end.

It barely seems to have started — there were no movements. We stayed indoors the whole year. The otters disappeared from the waterfront in front of our home just as the planes seem to have disappeared from the skies. I do not like being sad over anything. 

Much that is good has happened to me and mine though we have not been left unscarred by the deadly virus. The sadness of mankind tinges our existence. We live on an island but we cannot live in a bubble. The world stretches out its grief to us, its terror to us in pandemic proportions. Does the bug of sadness bite us? It does. 

Honestly from my heart it is difficult to celebrate against the misery that seems to have brought many to a halt. The misery of disease, death coupled with the inability to touch physically another human. It is all terrifying. Almost as if Asimov’s vision of Solaria is coming to life. And then there are wars over boundaries, hatred, anguish and anger. A very bleak scenario if we start listing, even if some of the issues have started moving towards  more hopeful outcomes with vaccines and the turn of world events.

Darkness is deepest just before dawn wipes away the blackness with its dappled touch. Maybe the rays of the new sunrise of the first day of the New Year will herald better times. 

I look outside my window at the clear skies, the sunshine and the golden orioles flying; the parakeets chattering and moving in flocks from tree to tree by the quietly flowing river and I feel maybe things will fall into place. Not in the way we knew it but in a new way. 

Maybe it is time for a fresh start, a new world, a new dawn and a new year. With that I wish you all a smoother journey in the New Year towards a happier world.