“Hope can be a very hard thing to carry...”

Time has slipped across the threshold of a new year while I have been away. Racing, irregular heart beats stole my focus from writing. I am back now, a steady, strong heart supporting my efforts. It is good to start the year able to give my words a chance to find their way into the world.

I usually welcome a New Year with unbridled enthusiasm; this most robust of new beginnings, a clean slate of days stretching all the way to 2023. But this year is different. This year I have been unable to leave behind the cumulative uncertainty, fear and frustration of the last two years. I’ve carried it on my back into 2022, and it colors my days in gray.

I tell myself that certainty is impossible, in pandemics and in life; that science is an evolving discipline, advancing and changing as small and large discoveries are made. I tell myself that democracy is divided government and that we have been much farther apart from each other than we are now, took up arms against the other, and survived. I tell myself that hope can be a very hard thing to carry; that faith can be lost and found anew; that love can require letting go and holding tight.

These thoughts are helping me welcome this new year and find the promise in it. My word for the year is: open: open to possibilities, to solutions, to revelations; open to what might be required of me to be of service; open to what rises up from within and what appears in the distance; open arms, open ears, open heart.

This word is slowly weaving its way into my days. The fog is lifting. I am opening up and I am getting back to work.