Another year over ...

Another year over, a new one just begun and once again here I am at the annual crossroads looking backwards and forwards at the same time to see can my experience over the past year help me to get a better grip on the challenges of the one to come.

With the world burning before our eyes as I write, it's hard to hold out too much hope for our collective future but if we live in active hope and practice what we preach with all of our shoulders to the wheel of fortune, then we might see some improvements. More, at least, than if we all sit idly by.

It was a great joy in 2019 to see so many more people doing things to help others. Actively helping those in need rather than leaving it to a.n.others and anonymous do gooders to do so. Hopefully, this new selflessness may gradually become a new kind of normal.

So much so that I propose that the word supererogation i.e. acting above and beyond the call of duty - be retired from the modern lexicon or at least replaced by a more appropriate term. I would suggest superHerogation as I doff my fedora to those of my friends who really pulled out the stops to help other people this year.

I listen to a lot of Christmas music in the house round this time and one CD I like in particular is the Christmas edition of Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour, recorded originally in the mid-noughties.

Usually it's the songs that are the focus of my interest but as I listened this year it was a 'magic formula' voiced by the host as a cure for one's personal woes that resonated most with me:

"What you gotta do is go out and help someone more unfortunate than you. Go to an orphanage, play football with the kids, go to retirement homes, go to soup kitchens, go into prisons, go see some people. There are people everywhere who aren't as well off as you. No matter how bad you have it, somebody got it worse. Instead of adding to the sadness in the world, why not lend a hand, help somebody out. And not just on Christmas, why don't you give it a try year round."

Yeah, so I suppose then that if we all show more kindness over the coming year and beyond, then we can reasonably expect to receive it back in equal measure.

That'd be what I'd call a fair trade.

Happy New Year, Friends.

More soon ...

Athbhliain faoi mhaise duit!