Another year comes to an end and a new one begins tomorrow. For all practical purposes, today is no different than yesterday and will be no different than tomorrow. The days blend into one another, as they always do. Changes occur now and then--usually gradually while no one notices. Sometimes they occur dramatically, and everyone stops and listens and thinks. But today is not one of those days.
And yet it is. Not
because New Year’s resolutions will be made.
People will resolve to stop smoking or start going to the gym. They’ll resolve to eat better and lose
weight. They’ll resolve to be more
focused or more loving or more adventurous . . . and the list goes on. Every year the resolutions are made. Occasionally, the promises are kept. Often they are not. We’ve come to expect that they’re just
words. We’ve even come to just snicker
at them and roll our eyes.
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| In Pandora's Jar . . . |
But there is
something. Today I saw something. I went looking for it. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I
went and looked just the same. And then
I found it, so I took a photo of it.
It’s hope. Can you see it? Can you see the rays of hope? I almost missed them. It’s easy to miss them because they’re so
fleeting. But they’re there.
In the end when the darkness is all around us, when our
friends are gone and our families have died, when money is just paper and it means
nothing, Pandora left us this one thing in her jar. It’s the only thing left, the only thing
we’ve ever really been able to call our own.
So we pick it up, and like Janus of old, we look back upon our difficult
lessons and then forward upon the never ending road. And we set out upon the journey again.
