Ring In the New…
When our Year of Grace 2018 was born at midnight last Dec. 31, people all across this great globe of ours stayed up late to mark the grand occasion. They cheered a lot, and maybe they sang a lot, and perhaps they drank a lot, and they did this in Tokyo and Beijing and Moscow and Times Square and Sioux Falls and in Cripple Creek, Colorado. And others of us celebrated in our own, quieter ways – perhaps having dinner with friends, or making a phone call to loved ones who no longer live close, or even watching that greatest of all Christmas/New Year’s romantic movies, “When Harry Met Sally.”
And not even the wisest among us knew – or could possibly know – what lay ahead in 2018. We did not know – could not possibly know – that summer would deliver so much devilish heat around California, or that so many tragic wildfires would scar and brutalize our Golden State and kill so many people. There was no way to know that gunmen would keep shooting up schools and houses of worship and country-western bars and even hospitals around our nation. No way to know anything.
I recently listened to a magnificent year-end look-back hosted by Frank McGee on NBC Radio’s outstanding weekend-long “Monitor” at the end of 1962. Much of his brilliant retrospective of That Year That Was involved the Cuban Missile Crisis, and, of course, President Kennedy. How incredibly sad it was to hear the President’s young, vital voice – and to know something that neither McGee nor NBC nor anyone else in the world could know – that JFK would make that trip to Dallas, and that it would end horribly.
But would any of us really want to know what will happen this coming year? Would we really want to know who will die, or know which of our friends will get that debilitating illness – or whether we will? How could any of us go on living, knowing what was going to happen – and not being able to fix or change any of it?
After all, life is not a comedy routine – like the legendary one Johnny Carson perfected with his “Carnac” on the “Tonight Show.” “Carnac” had the ability to see the future. Of course, he did it for laughs – giving the answer to a question that was inside a “hermetically sealed” envelope handed to him by Ed McMahon – then ripping that envelope open and reading the predictably funny question. (“The answer is – La Brea Tar Pits. The question is – what do you find in a La Brea Tar prune?” You get the idea.)
But we don’t have Johnny’s writers, so when New Year’s Eve rolls by, we won’t be able to predict upcoming events. We’ll just do what everyone else does – celebrate the coming year and hope like heck that it’s better than the one that’s ending. It just has to be, doesn’t it? Or not. Perhaps, for our sanity, it’s best to practice a combination of “blissful ignorance” and “wishful thinking” By “blissful ignorance,” I don’t mean disregarding facts that would contradict our biases – I mean that we simply don’t know what’s in store. That sounds pretty blissful, all right.
Now combine that with a touch of “wishful thinking,” and we may be onto something. How about “wishfully thinking” that we’ll have enough rain this coming year? How about a “wishful thought” that gunmen won’t shoot up any more schools or churches? And how about this one: Why can’t we all “wishfully think” that our national politics would become less hateful? (I know, I know – some things are so far “out there” that it seems futile to even “wishfully think” about them.)
But while this old world is, yes, a mess in many ways – with just a bit of effort, all of us can probably find some reasons for optimism in the coming year. For one thing – the fact that we’re “still around” to see 2019 – even if it means we’re getting a year older – is a positive, isn’t it? So, yes, this New Year’s Eve, what the heck? Why don’t we all try to join, in spirit, all those folks in Tokyo and Beijing and Cripple Creek who will be cheering or singing or imbibing or dining out with friends? It can’t hurt us to be happy, so — here goes: Happy New Year, everyone! And may it be so, in truth, for you, for me, and for all of us.