The new year always brings hope
The FilAm Editorial
In the intimacy of our homes while the lights twinkle in the gloaming, we quietly celebrate the advent of another Christmas and look hopefully to another year, albeit one with an extra leap day in its fold.
We Filipino Americans buy our hams, craft our fruit salads and try to give into the joys of the season. We try to ignore or set aside the discordant, depressing noise of the holidays.
That would be the ugliness of war — in Gaza or Ukraine. That would include speeches calling people “vermin,” or others as “poisoning the blood of our nation.”
Some people do not want to bring any more children in such a troubled world wracked by so much hate. Indeed, why add to the litany of the worlds’ suffering. It is hard to argue against such a view given the depravity of inhumanity invoked by so many these days.
The vitriol seems so contrary to the message of what Christmas proclaims which is peace to all people of goodwill.
We declare fidelity to the New Year in the hope that peace will prevail not only on one street corner but in every single portion of the world.
When one looks out on this blue orb hanging so precariously in the firmament of our solar system, one cannot help but wonder if this planet we call our home would last much longer.
The only thing we can really hang onto is hope, the belief that we will find a way, no matter how dire the situation looks, to discover a means to work together rather than indulge our self-destructive impulses.
In this time when we go back to mark Christmas and seek to remind ourselves of our common heritage as human beings, we can earnestly pray that there is much more we have in common than divides us.
The alternative to not finding the way to help each other is too horrible to contemplate.
Is the world in bad shape?
Yes, it is.
But no. It is not hopeless. It will be hard, but not impossible to claw our way, inch by painful inch, out of the morass we have dug ourselves into.
We have no choice. We do not want to see those hopes extinguished. Christmas always means hope and resilience. We shall never quit.
© The FilAm 2023
