New Year's Day is an arbitrary date

On the cusp of a new year, gray clouds hover overhead, and a cold breeze chills my aging bones. The January 1 date for turning the calendar's page is an arbitrary choice. No celestial or terrestrial event marks the date. Many businesses use a different calendar to divide their years (July 1 to June 30 is a popular choice).

On this night, people will celebrate the dawn of the new year, as if something had changed. But 2018 melts into 2019 imperceptibly. The death of one year and the birth of another brings fireworks, resolutions, and hope, but Jan. 1 is seldom noticeably different from the day before.

It is natural to wish for a better year as the old year ends. Many people will make resolutions to do better, do more, be better, be more helpful, be more generous and caring. But the resolve of Dec. 31 slowly dissolves into the hustle and bustle of 2019. Few resolutions and few hopes for the new year are followed or fulfilled. The year may change, but we remain the same.

A few years ago, as I toasted the new year quietly at home with my wife, she said, "I hope next year, no one we love will get sick or die." It was a deeply felt desire. In the previous consecutive several years, we had faced the deaths of parents, siblings and good friends. It was difficult to be hopeful about a new year that did not include our departed loved ones. She expressed that hope about the new year twice before a year finally came when we didn't travel to a funeral.

We all hope for a new year that was better than the last one or less painful than the last one. But pain inevitably comes, and as we grow older the pain of lost family and friends grows more frequent. Still, we wish for others and for ourselves a happy new year, a year without death and despair, a year with happiness and fulfillment, with comfort and achievement.

This is the day, an otherwise ordinary winter day, when we resolve and wish for what will come.

At the end of another year

The last day of 2013 is overcast and dreary, "a winter's day in a deep and dark December," as Paul Simon once said. It seems a fitting marker for a year that had its low moments. My sister died in July, just a month after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Nothing has made me feel my own mortality more than the death of my younger sister. My parents' five children are now diminished to two, and I am, for the first time in 61 years, the youngest again.

A year ago, after we had endured the loss of at least one close relative each year since 2010, my wife offered this New Year's hope: Let's have at least one year when no one gets sick or dies. It was not to be.

At the close of 2013, we put another year tainted by sadness behind us and look ahead with hope for a better year in 2014. It is the year when I will become eligible for Medicare and come closer to my anticipated full retirement age. For at least 10 years, my wife and I have talked longingly about the time when we would not have to go to work every day, when we could nourish the hobbies we have little time for while working, when we can travel to the places of our dreams, when we can better connect with our grandchildren and friends. That day is still years into the future.

This will be a whole new year, one for which we have made few plans yet, except for the plans we had forgone this year and earlier years as impractical. We plan to spend a weekend with all of our children and grandchildren at a date and time to be determined. We will celebrate birthdays and other milestones. We will try again to make those trips that have been just out of reach — down the length of Skyline Drive/Blue Ridge Parkway, to Ocracoke, to Kentucky and Tennessee, to Pittsburgh, to the Rockies and California. We will make a new to-do list for repairs and improvements around the house and hope to check off at least one or two items from the list.

Most of all, we will sit in quiet evenings before the living room fire or on the deck in the cool dusk after a hot summer day and breathe in the blessings we have enjoyed. We will breathe out silent thankfulness for this marriage, this house, this family, this (relative) healthfulness, this life. We will try harder than ever to savor every moment, to recognize joy and to be productive in every opportunity we are given.

I have never been one for New Year's resolutions, but I do look forward to a better year and to doing better with the blessings I am given, when even the difficult years are blessed.

Looking ahead at this new year

It's a new year, though only a few hours removed from the old year. It is not, as some list-makers have claimed, the end of the decade. (Decades begin in the year ###1 and end in the year ###0.) But instead of looking back on 2001-09, let's look ahead at 2010.
• This year should bring a climax to the multiple investigations of the Easley administration. My guess is that there will be an indictment on at least some of the charges against him. It could be as minor as campaign finance misreporting or as serious as influence-peddling. Will it be failure to report free flights on private aircraft or pressuring N.C. State to hire his wife or manipulating state regulatory responsibility for fun and profit?
• However the grand jury decides on the Easley issues, the embarrassing publicity and some retirements from the legislature should make 2010 a golden opportunity for North Carolina Republicans. After losses in 2006 and 2008, the GOP needs a win or two. As usual for the state GOP, the question will be whether it can present competent, qualified candidates or will it insist upon ideological purity? The key will be independents, also known as unaffiliated voters. If Republicans can woo them instead of scaring them away, Republicans could rule in Raleigh.
• President Obama got his health care bill through the Senate. Now he and congressional leaders have to resolve the many differences between Senate and House versions. This may be even more difficult than bargaining 60 Senate votes. Democrats are determined to get a health care bill signed, so it could happen. One thing to remember, however: Most of the provisions of the bill will not take effect until 2011, which means the new provisions won't help Democratic candidates in 2010 elections. In fact, the bill could hurt them if critics succeed in highlighting ambiguities and disinformation about the bill.
• The war in Afghanistan continues with the addition of new U.S. troops, but victory over the Taliban and the entrenched tribal loyalties of the Afghans is not assured. American troops are to leave Iraq, but that squalid country is still a dangerous place that could easily collapse into civil war.
• A larger concern than either Afghanistan or Iraq should be the global conspiracy to wage a war between fundamentalist Islam and the secular (or Judeo-Christian) West. Recent failed plots to attack U.S. facilities and recruit American jihadists portend an increasingly dangerous world. Although the militant jihadists are a tiny percentage of Muslims, their ideology and their tactics endanger people of all faiths and threaten to undo the civilizing arc that began with the Enlightenment. America and the West, along with the moderate majority of Muslims, must recognize this threat and eliminate it before it sends civilization into a fatal tailspin. 2010 could be a crucial year in this struggle.
• The American economy should improve in 2010, but it will be a long time before "good times" return. Savings, home values and employment will improve some, but not a lot. Unless there is a seismic shock, such as a successful terrorist attack, things should improve incrementally through the coming year. Many geographic areas will continue to have persistently high unemployment. Instead of a new stimulus, Congress should review and revise government policies on trade, taxes, banking and manufacturing that got us into this mess.
• 2010 by most any measure should be better than 2009, but that's a bit like being sweeter than a salt lick.

A new year, all fresh and bright

Jan. 1 is the day for making New Year's resolutions — a tradition I've never cared much for. The new year itself is so arbitrary. Jan. 1 has no astronomical significance. It's not an equinox or a solstice, just an arbitrary date for turning the calendar. But a new year, like a new day, is an appropriate time to make plans and set a schedule.

My resolution for 2009 is not to find a new job but to find a new career. My three months of enforced idleness (although I can produce a list of things I've accomplished since my layoff) have made me eager for a new purpose, a new mission, new goals. I hope to have a solid new purpose, a new set of skills to nurture and a clearer path to the future. Just make it soon.

2009 has to be better than 2008, when gasoline rose to over $4 a gallon and a housing and credit crisis saw the stock market collapse, housing prices fall and retirement plans crash and burn. There are already some indications that the worst might be behind us. The stock market has edged up in the past couple of weeks. There have been no more falls in the Dow Jones of hundreds and hundreds of points in a single day. The market shrugged off the election of a presumably less-free-market-oriented Democrat, and some investors are hoping the president-elect's plans for an infusion of infrastructure funding will boost employment and stock prices.

The Iraq War is scheduled to wind down, no matter what President-elect Obama does. The U.S. handed over control of the Green Zone today, and U.S. troops are scheduled to leave Iraqi cities this summer. Iraq is still a long, long way from stability and peacefulness, but conditions are improving, and American troops are scheduled to get out of the way.

We still face difficult times in 2009. Unemployment is at its highest in 20 years and will not go down quickly. Credit remains tight, despite efforts to expand the money supply and subsidize banks and other lenders. Everyone's retirement plans will take a long time to recover from their early 2008 or late 2007 levels.

But a new year brings hope, even if the date is arbitrary, even if times are difficult. Today dawned clear and bright. Let us hope that it is a harbinger of brighter times ahead for all of us.

After-Christmas quiet seeps into life

On this Sunday after Christmas, the house is quieter. The guests are gone. The chaos of small children and all their accouterments is gone. Toys that had been strewn across three rooms are gathered into baskets and boxes for storage until the next visit. Food that had been prepared for party guests and visitors has been mostly consumed with enough leftovers to serve two people quite well for a couple of days.

This is the aftermath of America's busiest holiday. Retailers are taking account of how they did. Their after-Christmas sales are clearing out merchandise that had not been sufficiently appealing or low-priced enough. They'll soon be making space for spring merchandise. Businesses are looking at bottom lines, estimating tax costs and making plans for the new year.

We are closing out the old year and getting ready for the new year, a new president, new governor, new U.S. senator. 2009 promises to be difficult, at least in its opening months. The financial crisis that rocked the nation in the fall will not go away easily. More pain seems likely.

As for me, I am weary of the aimlessness, loneliness and frustration of joblessness. I am hoping for a new job, one that will make it safe to consider spending money again, enjoying life again, feeling a purpose again and avoiding the lurking bitterness in which I had sworn I would not wallow, justifiably or not.