We're only in a year for a year, but every year around this time, we are struggling to get our minds around a new one. This year does seem different - to use a Biblical metaphor, we seem at the outset of 2019 to be straining on tiptoe to see what promises to be the unfolding of a whole new era in this global hemisphere. I have to admit that I am something of an optimist - I always think the best is yet to come and can never get my mind around people who look backwards to the best times of their lives. I hear Margaret Atwood, and I take seriously dystopias projected both in the political arena and in literature. The female sex turned into Handmaids or any other sector of society subjugated at the hands of the greedy few, is of course not unimaginable. In part, we are already living through such a scenario.
But there is something in me that does not love a wall. There is always the belief that the wall can be peered through or climbed over. I don't have a whole lot of faith in mankind, and only because look where it has brought us! I have more faith in womankind, because this 51% of the population is less likely to miss the forest for the trees. Laying waste to the environment and widening the gap between the haves and have-nots is a particularly short-sighted male perspective (NB. Not all males!) It compartmentalises the vast plight of humanity and refuses to to see beyond the wall of its own construction. Trump and his administration are a startling manifestation of this. I venture they are the last hoorah of this thrashing dragon.
So 2019. A good year, I think. I note a small chain around the foot of said dragon. I see the heart going out of his thrashing. We don't need to kill the monster, but we do need to contain it, and perhaps this year, such a strategy will begin to feel like a realistic possibility. In the words of a Christian saint, and far from anything I normally would appeal to, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."
No comments:
Post a Comment