Phrase of the Day: STAY STRONG

Farewell, 2018.  Greetings, 2019.  My sincerest wishes to all of you, dear readers, for a wonderful new year!

Two years ago, when we were bidding farewell to 2016, many of us, myself included, bemoaned how terrible of a year it was in terms of the number celebrity deaths.  While the number of celebrity deaths may be a little lower than two years ago, it has still been a rough year for other reasons.

Last year, in looking back at the stories of 2017, I wrote a line that I think remains applicable to looking back at 2018:

"[M]any of the stories had me wanting to eschew profundity for profanity..."

Yep, still true.

Much of the good that happened this year, and there was a lot, was overshadowed by the bad.  (Sadly, this is the norm.)  It was certainly a rollercoaster ride, but there was plenty of both. 

The fight to get medical marijuana, which has been proven to be beneficial for certain individuals, legalized in this country continues to slowly move along as does the fight to reduce or cut medical benefits.  The Democrat's "blue wave" washed over the House of Representatives with a gain of forty seats while voting rights and actual votes cast were cut.  We reached for the stars with NASA and SpaceX, even landing on Mars, but far too many of us here on Earth continue to die from hunger.  Boeing launched a business jet capable of the longest flight time ever while even the briefest of human connections became just a little briefer. 

Ireland repealed its abortion ban while some American politicians continue to try and legally define abortion by re-defining what a living human being is at earlier and earlier times in a woman's pregnancy.  Whether you call it neo-Nazism or nationalism, it rose (and not just in the U.S.) while the unnecessary harassment and murder of innocent persons, mostly black, remained relatively unchanged.  South Korea hosted its first ever Olympics Games, but the question of whether the money spent for the Games could be spent more wisely, either for the Games or elsewhere, remains.  (I think it can.)  The election of Miguel Diaz-Canel as President of Cuba ended nearly six decades of rule by a Castro, while many in this country want our current President out of office after just two years.

A rollercoaster ride, indeed.

I would like to offer something personal as, hopefully, a reminder for the rest of us.  Without getting too mired with all of the details, I found 2018 to be a year that I felt alone.  There is a difference between being alone and feeling alone.  Being alone can be a good thing.  Sometimes, you may want to be alone to recharge your batteries or decompress from a stressful situation.  I try to find times when I can be alone from time to time, and I find it necessary.  Feeling alone is where you feel, rightly or wrongly, that you have no one to help, no one has your back.  It may be something you feel in general or it may be in terms of something particular. 

For me, it wasn't just the loss of a dear friend just over two months ago, but there were moments near the end of the year (and more than just this year, to be honest) that showed me I have no one on whom I could rely.  There have been a few moments throughout my lifetime where I have felt this, so my goal is to try and see this as nothing more than the latest occurrence.

Even if successful in meeting that goal, it still hurts.  Honestly, no one should have to feel that.

We are all in this thing called the human experience together.  The less we are there for others, the greater the fabric of this shared experience gets tattered.  This is not advocating for making friends only with people who can benefit you; those are more utilitarian acquaintances than friends.  One of the pieces of the nature of friendship is helping each other out when needed.  Not that all of a person's friends are able to just drop everything to help, but when none do so, it is a horrible feeling.

So, yes, we are all in this together.  Be there for one another.

For the past several years, I have ended my New Year's post with a video of a song that usually points to the the year gone by, but more importantly, to the year ahead.  As this blog will wrap up later this month, this will be the fifth and final year for that.  With that in mind, I thought I would end with not one, but two videos.

The first song is Rachel Platten's hit 'Fight Song'.  I hope we all find some fight still inside of ourselves this year.  The second song is from a group called Playing for Change which works at connecting and inspiring people through music.  It is their first video, which was released ten years ago, and speaks to the last point I was making above.  It is a reworking of the classic Ben E. King song 'Stand By Me'.



Terry