Remembering 2012

The year 2012 will be remembered for many things, and many things from 2012 won't be remembered at all.  It will be remembered for mass shootings with assault rifles, but won't be remembered for the 179 days of happy, productive learning in schools all over the country.  It will be remembered for an ugly and breathtakingly expensive and seemingly endless election, but won't be remembered for all the regular people who did the very best they could with what they had to keep their families safe and warm and fed.  It will be remembered for terrifying acts by Mother Nature, but won't be remembered for all the millions of pounds of materials that made it to the recycling plants.  There will be retrospectives on the high price of gasoline and health care and public employee pensions, and little attention to the millions who made do with what was available and didn't look back.  There will be reminiscences of those “notables” who passed, but little will be said about the people who filled the year with daily events that we will never share again.

Let us remember that this past year was also filled with many miracles occurring every minute of every day, manifested by individuals in ordinary places.  Let us go into 2013 spending more time valuing those miracles and less time ogling at the freak and rare single events that are played again and again and again until they seem commonplace.

We each stand within a circle of influence that overlaps with the circles of others.  Those circles are much wider than we know and are adjacent to, or even shared with, the circles of complete strangers.  If every one of us commits to improving conditions in our respective circles, it won’t be long until everyone in the nation is standing in a better place.  Let this be your New Year’s promise to those you love, starting with yourself.

Peace on Earth