In the days between Christmas and New Year, it is customary to turn our thoughts back to the events of the closing year. Magazines, newspapers and television networks not only provide us with a thorough review of the year, but they often flood us with details that we would rather forget. We are reminded that the year 2015 was filled with violence on all fronts: numerous racial killings, gunfire between rival biker gangs, terrorist attacks at home and abroad and, of course, the perpetual wars. The year began with the news that terrorists had attacked the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 persons and injuring 11, and it ended with the terrorist attack at the Social Services Center in San Bernardino, killing 14 people. Then, there was the report of alleged irregularities in the email correspondence of Hillary Clinton during her time as Secretary of State, and on the following day, we witnessed the controversial visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who, against the will of the President of the United States, held a public address before Congress. During the summer, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, and NASA reported that its spacecraft New Horizon had reached the distant planet Pluto. Ending the year, there was the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, which resulted in a landmark agreement to limit global warming.
In addition to the national and international events which have taken place on the public stage, there were also the events in our personal lives that give us occasion to reflect on the closing year. Just as we tend to judge the events in the public sphere as a mixture of good and bad, the events in our own lives are a mixture of successes and failures, of joy and sadness–a mixture that in extreme cases can culminate in times of exultation and periods of melancholy. For life, as we experience it, always has an ambiguous character. So how do we evaluate the past year? In spite of the inevitable ambiguity of life, the balance sheet of the past year will turn out to be positive for most of us, if we consider it properly. To be sure, every one of us has had difficult moments, but the good that we were allowed to enjoy has outweighed in most cases the times of distress.
At this time of year, however, we experience more than just the ambiguity of life; we experience quite vividly our own temporality. The Old Year is coming to an end, and soon we will be entering the New Year. The transition from one year to the next evokes in us mixed feelings of hope and sadness. We embrace the hope of good things happening in the New Year, and yet the very fact that, for better or worse, we must enter the New Year causes us to reflect upon the relentless flow of time. The past fades away, and the future comes inexorably. In view of this, it is understandable that we feel the need to celebrate the coming of the New Year with family and friends. The turn from the Old to the New Year draws attention to the limited span of a human life and discloses the temporality of human existence. In doing so, it leads our thoughts to the past and to the future at the same time, just as the name of the first month of the year “January” indicates. The double-faced Roman god Janus was originally the god of the passageway through the gates and remains, therefore, a very suitable image of the New Year’s celebration. With his two faces, Janus looks backward to the past and casts a watchful eye toward the future. If we take the Roman god Janus as our guide and turn our attention not only to the past, but also to the coming year, we may express our hopes in the form of a New Year’s resolution.
Since this is my last opinion piece of the year 2015, allow me to express my views on New Year’s resolutions. Over the years, I have known people who have made very serious resolutions and others who have been content to propose relatively trivial goals, but I have not known very many people who have actually fulfilled their good intentions. Looking back over the year 2015 and casting a watchful eye to the year 2016, I would like to suggest a resolution that strikes me as appropriate and needful on the national as well as the personal level–a resolution that would be truly worthy of our very best effort. It is the practice of respectful dialogue. How much would be gained in national politics if Republicans and Democrats would resolve to treat each other with respect and to address each other in a manner befitting their office! And how much would be gained in our community if we could cultivate the practice of respectful dialogue!
Happy New Year!
Jack E. Brush is a Villager and a frequent contributor to Villages-News.com.
