2010

It's strange, when I was in high school I remember looking forward eagerly to the year 2000. I knew that nothing would really change, it wouldn't be the brave new world that so many people thought it would be. Still, it was a thing that I would tell my grandchildren one day.... I rang in the year two thousand.

Now it's ten years later. It's still not the brave new world that the new millennium was supposed to be. I'll have still more stories to tell my grandchildren. The kind my great grandmother and my grandfather told me, about living through the depression. About living in a time of change, of a fluid sense of the world.

Is our society today that different from that of the people who lived through the stock market crash, the dust bowl? We hear the stories of those who suffered and persevered through those hardships, because they are the ones who made it through. When this economic crisis is over, when the country breathes easy again, will we be, once again, a nation of survivors?

Will we tell stories of those who lost all their material goods, and having nothing else in their lives that they believed were important, took that final leap or that handful of pills?

Will future generations think of us as survivors, pioneers, the ingenious ones who made it work when others were foundering?

Will things get to that point or will it seem so from the perspective of a future time?

So many, many questions. The only answer I know is this: When the time comes and my children and grandchildren ask me about this time in my history, I would like to be able to hold my head high and tell them truthfully that I am proud of the life I lived and that although I made mistakes I learned from them, and they made me better, stronger.

So, my wish for all of you in 2010 is this: May you have joy, and knowledge, and end the year stronger than you began it.