Hope for a new year
The start of a new year, the start of new challenges.
As we get older new challenges come our way, but they increasingly get harder and harder. Life is unforgiving and never lets down.
Sometimes it feels as if the effort is not worth the reward. Tired and beaten we march ever onward through life, with no final rest in sight, where all battles are won, all demons defeated.
Death is the only way escape, the only peaceful sleep we are afforded. Quietness, silence. Like a warm embrace. But death is an illusion as the challenges are removed from us, but put onto others.
Excuse my depressive mood at the start of the new year. It's unavoidable to feel fatalistic after being thrown on the rocks repeatedly for a year. On bad days this gives me a strong sense of futility, on good days it inspires me to see the strength of the human character.
Great things were built because of stubborn people who were unwilling to accept defeat, to face the inevitable. Stupid people in some ways. To keep believing when all available evidence points in the opposite direction. Scientific, cultural and political revolutions are all driven by these hopelessly stubborn people. Einstein, Lenin, Picasso, the list goes on.
Why would I not be stubborn? Believing that peace can come to me? That life can just be good, joyful and peaceful.
Previously I would have considered it a naivete, but now I can admire the beauty. To believe so strongly and blindly, not in a God or afterworld, but in the future. To have hope.
I hope I can have hope this year.