New year’s eve is often a time of reflection and even regret, as well as anticipation and hope for the year to come. But we can only live in the present, so as a great sage once said:
“Be not afraid for the future or regretful of the past, for the past was once the future, and the future will soon be the present, until it quickly becomes the past, again. In this way there is no past, present or future. Or something.”
Wise words indeed and ones we can all easily choose to ignore.
We lost many wonderful people in 2016, including some personal heroes like David Bowie. I suspect we also lost a bit of faith in human nature, with the UK’s Brexit debacle and the US presidential election demonstrating once again how the masses can be manipulated by ruthless sociopaths and morally bankrupt media organisations to vote against their own best interests. We now live in a post-truth world we are told, although I’m not sure if that is true or not.
I had a somewhat difficult childhood, given the fact I was raised by wolves. Lost and alone in the wilderness of an Essex park, my only choice was to learn from their wily canine ways in order to survive. I say raised by wolves, although actually it may have been more of a brief babysitting. And the fearsome wolves that I encountered on that fateful day may have been a pair of quite friendly dachshunds. But their natural instincts to help a small boy, separated from his anxious parents for almost fifteen minutes, says a lot about why dogs are considered man’s best friend. I’ll never forget Dotty and Dennis the dachshunds, or their kind owner who helped me make the arduous half-kilometer trek back to the picnic area where my parents were finishing the last of the sandwiches and pop. I learned a very valuable life lesson that day: if you want to enjoy sandwiches and soda pop, don’t wander off in a daydream after listening to Peter and the Wolf ninety seven times.
Halfbananas - humour, short fiction & verse 