IMAGINING A HAPPY NEW YEAR

I was a child of the 60’s— I marched for peace and love…if I recall

which is why I have a Pablo Stanley poster with his interpretation of my favorite song, Imagine, hanging on my wall…

John Lennon released Imagine on September 9th, 1971…and every January I like to revisit it…as a new year has begun.

As one year ends it’s human nature to look back on the world we see…

then look ahead and try to imagine the world as we’d like it to be.

In 2021 we saw people still dying from a pandemic…as well as on our streets…we saw entire groups of people in the world and in our country still oppressed…

We saw natural disasters, people going hungry…

we saw social upheaval and political unrest.

So I like to imagine a world brimming with balance, equality and symmetry…

where we embrace instead of recoil from our differences…

where we all live free…in peace and harmony.

I imagine a world no longer filled with hungry men, women, girls and boys…a world where we look our sorrows in the face…and turn them into joys.

Perhaps you think I am a dreamer…looking for a world that can’t be found…but I say you are wrong…we can make this happen…all you have to do is look around.

For every story of prejudice and bigotry…amid the sadness and despairing…we find examples of acceptance and respect for one another…of love and generosity… and caring.

For every robbery…every crime…every time an Earth’s resource is depleted…somewhere in the world a tree is planted…a random act of kindness is completed.

For every country fighting wars…for every bomb that they release…there are people coming together in the name of unity and peace.

For every untimely death that sends ripples of sorrow across the Earth…there are ripples of joy that emanate from a newborn baby’s birth.

So you see the proof is all around us…we can change the fate of we the people…and of this planet we are living on…we just need more voices…more dreamers…like me and John.

Dreamers coming together to make our world a better world than it ever was before…

So we won’t have to look back every January and imagine it be different anymore.