Final Words in 2008
So much for keeping this thing up, but at least I can get one more post in before the clock rolls over again and we start with the resolutions and a New Year.
The festivities have already begun here. Two days ago the shops started selling fireworks and I, of course, went out early and bought my little arsenal. The intermittent booms outside serve only as foreplay for me.
Being here, immersed as I am in German all day long, has caused me to seek out sources of English wherever I can. I get a little CNN in now and then, but my anchor is the NY Times and I follow the news doggedly. It's been a hurricane of a year looking back and honestly, I'm not sure even the eye of the storm is anywhere in sight let alone an end.
I am thinking especially of our soldiers who are serving overseas, the small business owners around the world who are furiously strategizing ways to survive these precarious economic times, and the suffering masses around the world who daily experience a hell on earth we can only try to conceive.
I have so many wishes for the New Year and none of them are for myself. There are too many others in the world who need our wishes. If I have one aspiration for 2009, it would be to quickly and successfully negotiate the end of my pursuit of this B.A. degree, get back out in the workforce and find some avenue to contributing to the improvement of the world.
There are no more borders to speak of: try as many might to erect and maintain them, the demands of our human race place demands on all of us as members of that race to struggle with new vim towards some kind of global unity. There is no more chance for isolation: We can not choose to be alone; neither as individuals nor as nations or even hemispheres; advocacy by those who have for those who have nothing is the only acceptable option. Advocacy can be as simple as having a conversation with someone about current events and as complex as choosing a new direction for one's life.
2009 is not going to be pretty, for anyone, but behind every great crisis lies the potential for great greatness. This above all is what I hope we as a race of humans will work towards this year and all those that follow; a world with less tolerance for war, famine, and human rights abuses and more tolerance for that which we do not understand, that which is different and that which frightens us.
As the clock rolls over, let us embrace each other and make room for one another; there is after all, plenty of room on this Earth if we would only figure out how best to use it.
Peace and love to all.
The festivities have already begun here. Two days ago the shops started selling fireworks and I, of course, went out early and bought my little arsenal. The intermittent booms outside serve only as foreplay for me.
Being here, immersed as I am in German all day long, has caused me to seek out sources of English wherever I can. I get a little CNN in now and then, but my anchor is the NY Times and I follow the news doggedly. It's been a hurricane of a year looking back and honestly, I'm not sure even the eye of the storm is anywhere in sight let alone an end.
I am thinking especially of our soldiers who are serving overseas, the small business owners around the world who are furiously strategizing ways to survive these precarious economic times, and the suffering masses around the world who daily experience a hell on earth we can only try to conceive.
I have so many wishes for the New Year and none of them are for myself. There are too many others in the world who need our wishes. If I have one aspiration for 2009, it would be to quickly and successfully negotiate the end of my pursuit of this B.A. degree, get back out in the workforce and find some avenue to contributing to the improvement of the world.
There are no more borders to speak of: try as many might to erect and maintain them, the demands of our human race place demands on all of us as members of that race to struggle with new vim towards some kind of global unity. There is no more chance for isolation: We can not choose to be alone; neither as individuals nor as nations or even hemispheres; advocacy by those who have for those who have nothing is the only acceptable option. Advocacy can be as simple as having a conversation with someone about current events and as complex as choosing a new direction for one's life.
2009 is not going to be pretty, for anyone, but behind every great crisis lies the potential for great greatness. This above all is what I hope we as a race of humans will work towards this year and all those that follow; a world with less tolerance for war, famine, and human rights abuses and more tolerance for that which we do not understand, that which is different and that which frightens us.
As the clock rolls over, let us embrace each other and make room for one another; there is after all, plenty of room on this Earth if we would only figure out how best to use it.
Peace and love to all.
posted by Peter at
10:06 AM
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