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.
Still, I have my own hopes and goals for the coming year: I certainly hope it will be a year filled with small individual triumphs and further great leaps forward for mankind. At the very least, a slightly less troubled world for us all. And when you step back and look at the bigger picture, the world is vastly better than it was, even quite recently in our history.
I also hope that President Trump (Don’t laugh, it wasn’t a bad dream and he really is about to become the POTUS) doesn’t start WWIII. Perhaps if he distributes free parmesan cheese to the population he really can make America grate again..
I very much hope a rogue asteroid doesn’t destroy the Earth, or at least not until after I’ve seen the new Blade Runner and Alien sequels.
I hope we all get our own self-driving space cars and a robotic personal assistant to do all the boring stuff. Like work.
My personal goals include becoming better at blinking, finding another word for thesaurus and lastly for the blog to become a bestselling book / TV series / major motion picture / video game / knitting pattern. Or at least get a few new readers.
Einstein once said: “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one”. Or at least I think he did. We may have imagined it.
I trust that whatever persistent illusions 2017 brings you are good ones and hope you find some measure of peace, happiness and prosperity. Or at least a big bag stuffed full of cash and drugs.
Thanks for following and a very happy new year!
© Copyright Jason Lennick 2016. All rights reserved.
Halfbananas - humour, short fiction & verse 
I just looked up thesaurus in a thesaurus and apparently it is the only word for thesaurus. What an oversight. Out of the ‘not exactly thesaurus but other word-based reference books’ that were suggested as alternatives, I did like ‘onomasticon’. I’ll definitely be using that in the future…
Anyway – Happy New Year!
PS. if you do find a bag stuffed full of cash – it’s mine I’ve been looking for it for ages. The drugs aren’t mine though and no-one can prove otherwise…
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Onomasticon is good, and for Lennon fans there’s always the Yokonomasticon… (sorry)
Cheers James, a very happy new year to you too!
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Godt NytAr! x
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Great post and thanks for making me smile. I too long to see your blog made into a knitting pattern. This year has definitely felt strange what with all those well known people passing away and with the odd changes in the political landscape. What the heck is a post-truth world?
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Thanks!
I’m not sure whether the concept of truth in the media went into hiding last year, but hopefully it will reappear at some point.
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I’m very skeptical about the media in general.
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Happy new year and thank you for your delicious posts on the last year. I won’t miss them anymore. Greetings from Black Forest
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Will now be checking my mailbox every day for my parmesean cheese stimulus package.
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I suspect if Trump distributes parmesan, only the very rich will get the good stuff you have to grate, the rest of us will get the pre-grated stuff that has sawdust in to keep it from clumping. But he’ll still take credit for giving us all the good stuff. Unless of course folks call him on it, in which case it’ll be [Hillary’s | scapegoat of the moment’s] fault.
Happy New Year. I suspect 2017 will provide plenty of grist for a certain sort of comedy…
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Happy new year Dave!
Here’s to real parmesan for all, and a year of great comedy (with hopefully a lot less of the tragedy). Cheers!
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I love your comment about living in a post-truth world, Jason. I wasn’t quite so enthusiastic about the combination of the words President and Trump, though. I guess we just have to live in the world we have rather than the one we’d like to have (that is, if we still have a world at all after the new US president’s foreign policy gets started).
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Great article! Digging the vibe you’ve got going there. 2016 was hard for all of us, I think. At the very least, 2017 should give plenty of things to write about. Happy New Year!
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Thanks Joe! I’m sure 2017 won’t be dull… Happy new year to you.
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