Stay Positive Sunday: Holding Hands and Going Steady

We're gonna start the year off with a positive jam.

I mean, not exactly.  I just couldn't resist that line.  The truth is there's a lot of positivity out there about 2017 - or rather there's relentless negativity about the year that 2016 was, and a desperate belief that 2017 can't get any worse.  Mind you, anyone who's seen a sitcom can tell you the phrase "this can't get any worse" is a sure sign everything's about to.

The thing is, I don't want to rain on anybody's positivity parade.  I'm an optimist at heart, and despite recent developments I have faith in the future.  I honestly do want 2017 to be a better year than 2016, and I think it can be.  But wishing for it won't make it so - it's going to be hard, and it's going to take work.  Unfortunately, there's no magic to turning a page in the calendar.

I've known a couple people over the course of my life that have never been happy where they lived - that is, in the actual physical location.  They'd have a laundry list of complaints about the town - no culture, too expensive, the people were assholes.  And they were convinced that if they could just move somewhere else - if they could just get out of that town, their life would be perfect.

Can you guess what happened after they finally got that move they wanted?  It's not hard.  This new town was fine for about a month, but then problems would start creeping in - there's no nightlife, you couldn't find a certain kind of food, etc.  Bottom line: they were still unhappy.  And so they'd dream up some new fantasy life somewhere else, and put all their effort into moving there.  But the problem was never the where the lived; they were unhappy with something on a deeper level, something heavy and personal and hard to fix.  

None of us were happy with living in 2016, and towards the end, all we could talk about was moving on.  But the problems that made the year so shitty - rampant political division, violent nationalism and unbridled bigotry, a patent refusal to see other people as fundamentally human (and, I guess, celebrity mortality) aren't going to go away.  They move with us, and unless we get better at handling and solving them in a healthy way, 2016 is going to suck just as hard.

Around this time every year, people make Resolutions, and while I appreciate the sentiment I think it kind of misses the mark.  Tying a change to the New Year is dooming it to fail, because the year only stays "New" for about a month.  Real change is hard, and it takes a concentrated effort to make and more importantly to sustain.  But it's possible, and it's something we owe to ourselves, and to the future.  2016 sucked, but 2017 isn't guaranteed to be better.  All it has right now is potential; bright and brilliant possibility.  Let's work (really, work) to fulfill that potential.  Let's bust our ass and live up to all those New Year's eve toasts.  And when shit gets bad and the shine is off this year and it's not quite so new, let's not just junk it all and complain online.  Let's remember our positive jam, and above all else hold steady.