Hmmm, will you join me in being a pie in the sky optimist for 2024?
It is my custom at this time of year to fashion my Christmas wishes for the year ahead. This year they come in trilogy form.
The scourge of war is on all of our minds these days with the ongoing Russian invasion of the Ukraine and the Israel-Palestinian conflict. But the reality is these are only the wars that make the news on a daily basis. There are seven active conflicts around the world that have each caused at least 10,000 violent deaths.
My first Christmas wish is that war would become something that is found in history books only. That all would come to understand and take to heart that clinging to myopic dogmas – It’s mine, not yours OR I’m right and you’re wrong OR My beliefs are more righteous than yours – is a hopeless dead end that armed conflict can only exacerbate.
War is the lowest common denominator of human interaction in the very worst sense of the expression. We must open our hearts and minds to the essential truth that it is equally how we are different, as much as how we are alike, that makes our world the wonderful tapestry that it was meant to be. War cannot defeat or unlock closed minds.
Homelessness is an epidemic in this country. Tent cities are not the answer. Shelters and tiny homes are helpful but ultimately only a means of putting patches on the problem. The root cause is the ever-growing divide between the haves and the have-nots.
My second Christmas wish is that we come to understand that poverty is a curable disease in our society – not an inevitability. Only when wealth becomes something that all share in equally will there be a cure. Until that day arrives, we are all poor in heart and in spirit.
The primary objective of elected officials has regrettably become acquiring and wielding power rather than public service. The job requirements are becoming: the art of lying convincingly, the ability to suspend one’s conscience, mastering the skill of hollow rhetoric. The primary motivator for any government is now getting itself re-elected at any cost.
My third Christmas wish is that being elected to public office at any level returns to being a higher calling with no expectation of personal gain. And that the term politician ceases to be a dirty word we mutter under our breath. Only then will we be able to vote for who we believe is the best person for the job rather than for who is the least objectional candidate.
I refer to these Christmas wishes as a trilogy as they are intimately interconnected. One cannot come true without the other two. It is a package deal.
I wish you a very joyful holiday season and a prosperous New Year – one without war, poverty and political corruption. Call me a pie in the sky idealist if you will. I am happy to wear that tag.
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~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel (now out of print) which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .
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Tags: Christmas Wish · homelessness · metaphor · Michael Robert Dyet · politicians · poverty · warNo Comments