Reflecting on life as the calendar turns
A calendar in a classroom. Credit: Jeffrey Basinger
So, what to think about this year that has just passed? And what it augurs for the year ahead?
Most of us engage to some degree in this annual exercise in reflection and projection. Lately, the tendency has been to bemoan the year we’re exiting and hope against hope that the new year brings some improvement. Really, we say to ourselves, how could it be worse?
In the last few years, with a deadly pandemic that rages to this day, an ugly presidential election, a spate of increasingly dire climate-fueled disasters, a brutal war in Eastern Europe, ongoing mass shootings, debilitating inflation, and midterm election assaults on truth, there has been ample support at several turns of the calendar for a pessimistic point of view.
But that misses real advances in the fight against climate change and environmental degradation, real pushbacks against repression in Iran and China, the joyous swearing in of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and all sorts of individual acts of heroism and grace that offer many reasons to be wholly optimistic.
And you are reminded again that sometimes — most times — it’s impossible to see the glass as either half-empty or half-full.
Most of us have been asked at some point to define ourselves in those terms. It’s supposed to be a clue to our character. But around Jan. 1 of every year, the answer to the question of how we see the glass becomes crystal clear:
It depends.
Do you see in the war in Ukraine a proud people fighting for their homeland and democracy, pushing back a supposedly superior army, and embarrassing the imperial Vladimir Putin? Or do you see every day and night people being killed, buildings being destroyed, and millions being deprived of power and heat and light?
Do you see in the November defeat of so many election deniers in competitive states evidence that our own democracy is holding against an unprecedented assault from within? Or do you see in the ongoing attacks on voting laws in many other states evidence that the siege continues?
Are you bristling with optimism that new climate measures signed into law by President Biden and new international agreements reached in Egypt will over time increase our chances of keeping Earth from overheating? Or are you filled with pessimism that fossil fuel forces will keep working against those measures and that some nations will invoke self-interest in breaking ranks?
Are you hopeful about humanity going back to the moon and perhaps on to Mars after Artemis successfully circled our closest neighbor in outer space, and giddy about the mind-blowing photos of the farthest reaches of the universe being transmitted from the James Webb telescope? Or do you see the immense expense and cost overruns in these programs as enormous wastes and grumble that the money could have been spent more wisely at home?
Are you enthusiastic about the capacity of individuals to achieve when you consider that one man has shepherded the development of a pioneering electric car company, a satellite network, and a space company that returns and reuses its rockets? Or are you worried about the capacity of individuals to be destructive when you consider that same man’s personal and corporate erraticism and his unleashing of social network hate and bigotry?
Do you grit your teeth when you see in your neighbor a person who voted for a candidate you cannot stomach? Or do you smile when you remember the same person coming over with a snowblower when the drifts were just too high?
The world is complex. Thinking about it is difficult. It’s not only good but necessary that we see the both sides now of things large and small, and it does us little good to be only optimistic or pessimistic.
The glass is half-empty and half-full — last year, this year, and all years.
COLUMNIST MICHAEL DOBIE’S opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
