2011 - The Year It Is

New Years Day is coming up, at least for most of us. The Chinese already had theirs. So did us Pagans, technically.

But who will be cheering as the clock winds down this friday night? Me too. The pull of the mass is too strong to avoid.

Isn't that just the way of things, though? The weight carries us where it will. Come here, put here - same thing, no difference.

Sometimes.

But we do have choices. We have directions. We have the ability to look at the fork in the road and, bucking all sense or sensibility, go the tougher, more interesting, more dangerous route.

Sometimes.

Sometimes that makes all the difference, as we're reminded in poem and song. Sometimes we wobble, sometimes we're strong.

At the end of 2009 I looked at the year ahead and wondered what it would bring. I resolved no resolutions because I never keep them, anyway. I decided no decisions and made no special plans. Just the idea that I would be better at the end of this year than I was at the end of the others.

The idea is mostly bearing fruit, some of which is my fault and some of which is not. A lot of which is not, actually. It's scary how much of the blessings come whether ye will them or not. Also the bad.

Especially the bad.

But I stand at the end of 2010 a happier person than I was at the end of 2009. And I expect things will be the same next year, will under law and all that.

Sometimes.

But ere I hear times winged chariot drawing near, and with it the merchants of doom and gloom. I hear war and rumors of war. I hear the cry of extinctions and death camps. I hear we'll all be crying our eyes out before they pluck them out whole.

I hear this year will be the last year, as we reckon them.

Me? I remain optimistic. We were not put here to crawl into death. Ours is a story that goes on for the ages, come what may.

Good things will happen in 2011. Bad also. People will die, and live. People will be born, and reborn. People will succeed and fail, try and give up, love and hate, hate and loathe, loathe and then love all over again.

This is the circle we walk, one and all.

I can't make any promises or exact predictions. I may see 2012 with joy in my heart. I may stumble along the way. I tell tales not tea leaves.

Sometimes.

But the one thing I do know is that, in spite of the weight of the world pulling us along however many millions of miles an hour, rackety-blam around a Sun going however many million more, we still have the ability to choose that path less traveled, and reap what we may of that choice.

Don't let anyone tell you the future is written. Don't let anyone tell you that you're doomed. Don't let anyone tell you that it's all going to end in tears, or screaming, or an ascension of killer angels.

Don't let anyone tell you anything.

The world is largely what you make of it. Go forth and live it, love it, learn it. Go in and out and roundabout.

Go.