A New Year's Wish

Last night, I was talking with some friends at a New Year's party, and I suddenly said aloud, "This has been a really shitty decade." What a relief to admit it. Since the selection of 2000 (can we really call it an election?), very little seems to have gone right in the world.

My first thought, when I try to understand why things seem so terrible, is to blame the president. Even if you're a Bush supporter, can you possibly be satisfied with what he's produced? A war seemingly without end in Iraq? An exploding deficit that keeps ballooning more and more out of control each year? Newspapers filled with bombs exploding around the world (though none so far on our precious soil)? And despite Bush's grand promises to his conservative base on abortion and homosexuality, has he really managed to make any serious inroads on those issues?

Since this small-minded man has become president, we've become more divided as a nation (both from each other and our neighbors), our national culture has become coarser, our people have retreated out of fear into a blind imitation of faith that leaves us angry and bitter, and worst of all, we're constantly scared for our lives. We're afraid to fly, afraid to ride public buses or subways, afraid to travel to crowded cities like New York (tempting terrorist targets), afraid to write emails or do google searches that could be archived and some day come back to haunt us. We're even afraid to argue about politics with people who don't agree with us, afraid that the emotions underneath our political views will get the better of us and bring us to blows. Books, movies, and music are all tired and less accomplished retreads of things we've seen before. TV shows are becoming more violent, crude, and acrimonious. And the people who watch the shows and then imitate the behavior they see while speaking on their cell phones to teach other are becoming more violent, crude, and acrimonious. And no one cares. Why should they? They're behaving just like the man at the top, our violent, crude, and acrimonious president who will be remembered for two qualities: pettiness and vindictiveness. Oddly enough, he once claimed that his inspiration was Jesus Christ. Which specific characteristics do George Bush and Jesus Christ have in common?

Sadly, however, we can't heap the blame for all the troubles we're in on this one rather vile man. As powerful an office as he holds, and as powerful a nation as America is, we are not powerful enough to control the minds and destinies of the world's citizens, who are becoming increasingly selfish, shallow, and miserable. And for this state of affairs, each of us bears some responsibility. What have we done to make other people's lives easier, richer, happier? How often do we take a break from worrying about our petty concerns about our looks, our money, our inability to feel perfectly loved, entertained, and satisfied at all possible moments and instead think about the suffering of others? We don't need more iPods or cell phones or secret government agencies to spy on ourselves and others or consitutional amendments banning behavior we don't like. We don't need lavish vacations and parties with mountains of uneaten food that get thrown out at the end fo the evening and vulgar displays of jewelry and clothes and cosmetics. But what can I do, we ask ourselves. The world is big and its problems are bigger, and we are so small.

We can spread love, each one of us. And we can start now.

We need to love every person we know and every person we see and every person we think of, even George Bush, even terrorists hiding out in caves who may be planning our destruction. We need to turn off our cell phones and Tivos and iPods and all the unnecessary noise that's polluting our brains and we need to think seriously about who we are and why do we want to continue to live on this planet. And most of all, we need to stop being afraid, of terrorists, of ignorant presidents, or each other.

If we can just stop being afraid, that there won't be enough money for all of us, that some dark stranger is lurking around the corner who wants to kill us, that we're getting fat, old, ugly, boring, uninformed, that the world is going by so fast that if we don't race to keep up with our emails and voice mails and favorite websites it will pass us by--if we can just let go of the weight of all our fears, imagine how beautiful our world could become. It's so hard not to be afraid. And yet what has our fear given us? How has it protected us? Or has it only made us more vulnerable, causing us to spend more, worry more, argue more, and love so much less.

So that's my goal for this new year, and my wish for the world, that we all stop being afraid. Maybe not all the time, but maybe a few minutes each day, maybe an hour, an hour and a half, I will tell myself, I am not afraid. And I will wait for peace to come.