Year after year ...
Year after year, dreams are born, others vanish and life continues.
Year after year, a year goes by and another one starts, each with its share of comforting routine and worrying change.
Year after year, some projects finish, some start, and one project hasn’t ended yet.
Year after year the holiday season arrives with its load of happiness, remembrance, and sadness.
Year after year we try to gather the largest number of beloved people around the Christmas dinner, in an attempt to strengthen the ties among the people we care about, and thus keep away, from our souls, the anxiety of days to come.
Year after year we hope and plan, we become excited and determined, and then we do what we can.
Year after year the gentle past gets farther quicker than the beautiful future gets closer.
But, without a doubt, this year is a different year!
Only one year could encompass so many strong and contradictory emotions.
Only one year can leave in our hearts and minds such great and eternal memories.
During this memorable year,
Some people saw the light and freed themselves from their stifling lives, and others didn’t see anything but the waste of their self-inflicted misery.
Some people studied hard, forced their luck and entered the path they always desired, and others are still waiting for deliverance behind a computer screen, despite their hardship and eagerness.
Some people worked themselves to oblivion and were rewarded for their accomplishments that surpassed their most extravagant expectations, and others were overwhelmed by true life and woke up leaving behind them their childhood, stunned, dazzled, and aching.
Some people decided to defy the pace of life and chose the difficult road, and others are still enslaved in a world of wandering and fear, accepting their days, one after the other with surrender and defeat.
Some People stood watching this year passing by them like all other years: “No one knew and no one noticed”, and others compared and weighed, added and subtracted, hoped and despaired, doubted and believed, understood the goal then missed the meaning. They said to themselves maybe, then their selves answered back maybe what? They smiled and their lips got sore; they frowned and their eyebrows hurt; they laughed and their jaws cramped up; they wept and their eyes burnt. Those people wondered about themselves, the world, and themselves in this world. They questioned whether life is bigger than death or vice versa or what is the difference? Would the cup of gains get filled more often than it gets emptied? Is the conclusion at the end of the road zero, below it or above it? Will all the years be like this year? Or is this year not really a year after year?
What do we know?
Can we measure and compare anything in a year where we gained a soul and lost another one? When we acquired an experience and lost a choice?
Can we be affirmative when we reached an answer while we abandoned many questions?
What do I know?
Isn't the seed of the answer planted in the chests of the men and women of tomorrow? Aren't they the incarnation of the answer to those questions? Aren't they our hope in a future that we want more beautiful and promising than our past?
A wise man once beautifully said: “the parents ponder and the children, by the virtue of their existence, answer.”
So, may the birth of every child, and the birth of every new year in our lives, be, year after year, the birth of a promise in our minds, a joy in our hearts and a smile on our faces.