New Year's Eve

Well how about that? Another year ending and a new one about to start. Funny how that happens – and so regularly, too!

I don’t need to celebrate the end of the year, or even formally greet the New Year. Both events will happen with or without my acknowledgement. To act otherwise may suggest a mythological weight that I or you have in determining the outcomes of the future. I doubt such exists other than our good intentions considered and implemented properly in time. If we succeed we affect good things for self and others. If we do not succeed we affect ~ well good or bad things for self and others. Lost opportunities crimp only me; but the opportunity exists and someone else may gain from it.

Myth holds no sway in my life. I am a realist. Facts are facts and hopes are not facts. Dreams may propel my actions toward a goal or two but only my work and good timing with the world around me will accomplish the goal. Planning, therefore, is a way of bridging the present with the future. As an old Prudential Insurance advertising slogan from the 1960’s said, the ‘future belongs to those who prepare for it’. Need money in the future? Save for it today and tomorrow to accumulate the needed funds. Short on skills needed to perform a job in the future? Invest in education and training today and tomorrow to acquire the skills.

Preparation and planning are tasks to be done today for a future payoff. That seems logical. What is not logical is dreaming. That takes leaps of faith: that we have a future, that we have the capability of acquiring what is needed to make the future happen the way we want it to, and that we have the focus to dream in the first place.

Dreaming. Yearning. Thinking of things that could be. Improving on present circumstances. Inventing a new tool or thing that improves quality of living. This is what I mean by dreaming. It is imagining what could be or ought to be.

Dreaming takes time. It takes logic applied to what we know to produce what we do not know. It takes time and energy. It takes commitment to dwell on these things until they point a way toward the future – and the pathways that will get us there.

Pondering is related to dreaming. Thinking is related to pondering. Using the mind in productive ways serves all of these things. The discipline to do this must be present else we will avoid thinking with distractions of busy-ness, myth, noise, social activity and whatever else is handy. There is plenty of evidence of such distractions. There are telling signs of disconnectedness of our culture from its reality.

If there were no disconnects our values would be in conjunction with our social workings. Freedoms of expression, gathering, religion and so on would not be in dispute. Hot issues such as gay rights, abortion, and immigrant rights would not even be at issue. Governance issues would be logically managed, thus no deficit problem, no disagreement on a fair and just taxing system, and a reasonable approach to public expenditures.

Such is not the case, of course. We have much disagreement. We have the evidence that what we say, what we believe and what we do are simply not congruent. And that, I think, is a failure of our thinking, our values, and our intellectual discipline.

We need to ponder. We need to exercise the mind. It can accomplish much. Perhaps some good solutions to current problems. But certainly the peace. Pondering gives us quiet.

Perhaps it will give us a dream? For 2013?

December 31, 2012