Happy New Year! Hello 2024!!
Happy New Year!
It’s been challenging to find words to express how it feels to turn the page on 2023. On one hand, it feels almost exhilarating. 2024 HAS to be better, at least from a broad view of what has transpired. The U.S. is peripherally involved in not 1, but 2 wars for starters.
The inhumane treatment of the Ukrainian people by Putin’s Russia is unthinkable. Innocent people forced from their homes, many from their country. Sadly, after more than a year, we barely give Ukraine a thought as we are overcome with stories and images that depict the basest atrocities, sexual torture, mutilation, and genocide inflicted upon innocent civilians in Israel. In the name of the divine powers/the universe, how can this barbaric attack have happened? Who are these people? Why are they letting their innocent brothers, sisters, parents, and children die, as Israel retaliates against Hamas? How can Hamas hold the prisoners, and not seek a peaceful solution, when they can save millions of innocent Gazans, predominately women and children? How?
It’s hard to feel hopeful as we turn the page to 2024, with both wars raging.
But still, we do hope. We hope for peace in these countries, but also here in America where our own war has been waged, and where things just make no sense, no matter how one slices it. Hummingbird as a publication is apolitical, but we have to ask, how can we let this happen? Surely we can lean on our elected officials to make this go away— if we want to… if they want to. But not George Santos, OK?
We’ve had accomplishments, Nobel Prizes, Awards in Science, the Arts, Literature. That feels good. That makes us feel like something is, or maybe could be “normal.”
So I have two separate statements of hope that I’d like to share. Here’s the first, should you be the type of person that makes and attempts to keep a New Year’s Resolution.
“You want to set a goal that is big enough that in the process of achieving it you become someone worth becoming.” Jim Rohn
I’m thinking that’s formidable, but hey, we’re not getting any younger. We need to step on it for this one, so as not to run out of time.
And then there is this, which speaks pretty much to that same point. It is excerpted from a poem by Mary Oliver.
“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”Mary Oliver—The Summer Day (1992)
Just 10 days ago, I lost a colleague/became friend. He was one of the most brilliant people I know. He didn’t suffer fools well, but was first to advocate, sponsor, and support those that worked hard and smart. He had a quick wit, and a contagious laugh and smile. He grabbed life by the horns. I will always remember that. Rest in peace Frank DeBenardis.
Each new year teaches us that time is not waiting for anyone. Anything—everything—can change on a dime. We need to make it count, to do it right, to try to make this world a better place, from our smallest circle to our largest, we can make a difference, if we try.
