Boztopia.com

It’s tough to look at the last year and imagine that 2008 was good by any standard.

The war in Iraq continued (though it is finally, slowly, beginning to end). And the bombings in Gaza and Mumbai alike reminded us that there are many
conflicts in the world that demand our attention and responsibility. Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Thailand, and a list that keeps on going.

The global financial system revealed itself as an emperor
without clothes, and proceeded to flash us and slap us in the face with its junk accordingly. Everyone from Hank Paulson to Bernard Madoff seemed committed to showing the average person that they are nothing
but assets on a balance sheet, to be callously discarded without any
hope of ever getting a slice of the pie once their value is exhausted.

The Earth is still being polluted and its climate distorted at an incredible rate, leading to particularly horrific examples of our commitment to global self-destruction such as the Tennessee coal ash slide.

And on a personal level, although 2008 was actually quite good for me, I know far too many people who endured job losses, divorces, illnesses, financial trauma, and deaths.  No matter how you cut it, this was a
tough year for the world.

But there is hope. The first small, shiny, optimistic glimmers exist just around the corner that things will get better. That we can pull ourselves out of this mess we’re in and build a better, brighter, smarter, and sustainable future. The hard work still lies ahead, but we’ve drawn our line in the dirt and said
“No farther. The darkness will not overcome us.”

Life will go on. People will still die. There will still be war, and murder, and disaster, but we’re reaching the end of a cycle of rapacious greed, self-interest,and absorption in the idea that we, and we alone, are the only people who matter in the world. We’re seeing the first faint signs of a return or birth of a new idea–that we are all in this together. That we rise and fall as one nation–one people–one planet–one world. And that only as one world will we not only survive, but thrive.

Sometimes you have to endure horrible trials to truly understand the importance of life and your place in it. Sometimes you have to go through hell to get to heaven. On a global level, we’ve got a ways to the end of the tunnel, but we can see the light. So let’s keep going. Dawn is breaking, and we have toasts to make, friends to celebrate, lovers and families to adore, and a world to save.

Happy New Year, one and all. See you in 2009.