Hopes for the New Year
This New Year Can Become the Beginning of a Better World
Flowers blooming represent rebirth and hope. Bees are essential to our survival.
It’s New Year's Day as I write this, entering the third year of the pandemic. We’re suffering from Covid fatigue and wondering when it will ever end. It weighs on our children held from school and adds enormous pressure to parents already carrying huge burdens. It demands risk and courage from underpaid front line workers in grocery stores and threatens to break our nurses and doctors. As federal aid ends it threatens to put people on the street. It destroys dreams and lively hoods as restaurants go under, landlords struggle to pay their mortgages and artists and musicians lose opportunities to perform. It breaks our hearts as people we love die. It breeds mistrust and anger where there should be none. We have been isolated and divided and are unsure of the future.
The hard truth is we have created this situation together. The good news is the future is in our hands. We have the ability to correct the mistakes we’ve made, embrace the pandemic and global warming as a wake up call and live more purposeful lives for the experience.
Our country was founded on the principles of freedom and democracy. We have never exercised these rare and precious privileges as we should, but the framework is still in place. We continue to have the power and potential to change the world for the better. The vision to this point has been inexorably tied to capitalism, the idea that freedom and wealth are the same. They are not. We are seeing the limitations of that idea now in the face of pandemics which are becoming more frequent and global warming destroying lives through floods, drought, fire and increasingly violent storms. Capitalism depends on ever expanding, never ending consumption. When we see pictures of the earth from space we can clearly see the planet is finite, not never ending. As the most powerful nation in history we must change our model to one of spirituality, not materialism, conservation, not consumption, inclusion, not division. It is possible and essential that we do that, our very survival depends on it. It starts with you and me.
Just as the earth has limitations so does freedom. Freedom cannot be exercised without also recognizing responsibility. Our success is always dependent on others and always dependent on what the earth can give us. The more we take, the more we have to give back. We have arrived at the point where we have taken so much we have destroyed the ancient workings of the earth and nature. She can no longer restore herself.
Like you, I enjoy many things that technology gives us. My ability to share this essay depends on the computer from which I work and satellites and warehouses full of servers. All of these things were harvested through mining the earth, creating air and water pollution and destroying the habitats of creatures great and small that are essential to a balanced ecosystem and my survival as well as yours. I am keenly aware that every action I take has an impact. I turn the lights out when I leave the room and don’t let the water run when I’m brushing my teeth. I spend much time thinking about what is beautiful and meaningful.
Some years ago I worked in advertising and marketing as a graphic designer. That industry steers us away from meaning and beauty 24/7. It was a practical choice that leveraged my creative abilities before I was ready to make such an important life decision, not born of inspiration. In time I grew disgusted with it. Its shallow nature and my ever shrinking income as a result of computerization and globalization eventually drove me out. For ten years however, I was able to enjoy self-employment. From 7am to noon I worked, then took a break, three hour bicycle rides into the beautiful mountains of upstate NY. After the rides I put a few more hours into my work day. The balance between my profession and taking care of my mind and body was nearly perfect. It’s my opinion that time is far more valuable than wealth or possessions.
We have to look at our values and the kind of society we have created versus the kind of society we want. A couple of days ago, I have to get this in, an eight-year old tiger in a Florida zoo was shot dead because he grabbed the arm of some fool who decided to stick it in his cage. The tiger stolen from his natural world, which we mindlessly bulldoze and burn to the ground, did predictably what a tiger will do and grabbed the fool’s arm. When the police arrived they shot and killed the tiger who wouldn’t let go. Who deserved to die? The innocent, imprisoned, endangered tiger whose world we have stolen, or the incredibly dumb guy who stuck his arm in the cage, an example of moron of which we have far too many?
After years of living near beautiful rural settings, I now live in a city. Almost weekly I read of shootings within blocks of me. I see homeless people every day. They weren’t born violent or unable to fend for themselves. We created them just as we created sociopaths like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump. While one percent of the population holds ninety-nine percent of the wealth others wonder when they will eat again. Our system of capitalism created a few that have all, while the rest of us beg for the scraps, toiling in ever less secure jobs with little or no benefits. We foolishly cling to the notion that everyone can become a millionaire. Everyone cannot become a millionaire and doing so requires trampling other people as exercised today. It requires decimating the earth. It is immoral, unsustainable and spiritually hollow. A healthy society doesn’t depend on creating victims.
My hope on this New Year's Day is that we have gained wisdom through this difficult time of forced introspection. I hope we wake up and recognize what truly makes our lives meaningful, time and relationships. Materialism must end, it robs our souls, detours our happiness and is literally destroying what we need to stay alive on this planet.
If we’re fortunate we can make it to a new world, not one of a handful of survivors on a rocket ship fleeing an apocalypse of our own creation, but rather one created by embracing each other and healthy values. We need to evolve psychically and spiritually. Whatever your beliefs about religion and how we came to be, this planet and its fragile, complex workings are a miracle. Our lives should be about each other and being responsible, loving caretakers of the planet and the creatures on it, who are essential and deserving to be here as well. That’s where meaning and happiness lies.
Each day brings choices and each of our choices is powerful. Vote with your money. Buy only what you need and buy small. Reuse and recycle. Vote in elections, write letters and protest peacefully when needed. Boycott, your money is power. Every decision you and I make has meaning and power. If you find wisdom in my words, please share them with your friends. We can make this new year the start of a better world.