Retrospect 2024

2024 breathes its last sigh tonight. Time to look over our shoulders and review what was. It’s also traditionally the time to use that review to contemplate and prepare for changes in the upcoming year.  

Each election year continues to highlight how divided we have become, but this year, there were two profound events that showed how united we could be.  Here in northeastern Ohio we had a total solar eclipse pass directly over us in April and months later experienced the beauteous aurora borealis. Schools handed out eclipse glasses and shut down for the day; libraries and cities handed out glasses and threw watch parties.  Our streets, parks and fields were filled with people reveling together in the event. People were smiling, laughing, and all looking expectantly in the same direction.  Up.  We peered through our eclipse glasses in awe and wonder.  October came around and in Ohio so many were going to the dark places to look up again. Collectively rejoicing in beauty. Perhaps it was harder to enjoy - to see it best you had to look through your camera’s lens -- but many of us were united in the endeavor of seeing radiant colors dancing on our horizon. 

Shared delight is powerful.  It could be healing if we would  let it. What if we were to seek out our commonalities, the things that gave us all joy or inspiration? What if we were to seek out the good in the skies and in each other? What if our perspective changed and instead of thinking of ourselves, we thought of experiencing beauty as a whole. Maybe we seek those dark places and hope for light to dance. Perhaps we can pool our individual lights and collaborate together, compile all of our lights, to make beauty happen - not just in the skies, but down here below. 

How - that is the essential question. How can we take the excitement and wonder of celestial happenings and direct them to the terrestrial - and in a way that unifies, does not tribalize? This year a terrible hurricane devastated parts of the southern US.  In that, there was a glimpse of the possibility of unified light doing something magnificent.  Thousands of volunteers from multiple organizations mobilized to bring aid to the Carolinas, Florida, and Georgia.  They came from all over the country - from states like Idaho and Maine, California, Ohio and New York -  to clean out flooded homes, tarp roofs, build housing, and deliver supplies. Volunteers reached on on all levels to meet physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. The message was: you matter, you are not alone. 

Orson Welles once said something that I have serious problems with, “We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.”  While we have our own essential self, we are indeed part of the collective from the first breath we breathe. We are reliant on others to keep us alive, to guide us through the frailty of infanthood and onto maturity. Yes, sometimes that guidance sucks and isn’t all that it could or should be, but humans are communal beings. We need each other. We need togetherness. We need to help each other in our frailties and serve each other with our strengths. Screw Welles’ cynical slant - love and friendship are not an illusion; on the contrary, they are everything that is real and right about this existence. If we could stop being so obsessed in our self-service but instead turn our eyes, our hands, our hearts  outward, we could become a truly lovelier version of ourselves and in turn, collectively create a lovelier version of our world. I see a lovelier version where it's less about “mine” and more about “ours.” Where we take care of each other and throw off grasping, greedy patterns in exchange for lifting up our neighbor. 

In 2024, let’s truly love our neighbor as ourselves.  Let’s look up at the skies together in wonder and look down over the earth we share in charity, generosity, and true brotherhood.