Three Wishes for the New Year
In this first month of this New Year, 2022, perhaps we should stop and consider what we are looking forward to in the coming twelve months: are we looking for personal wealth? better health? or ???
Personally. I would rather look at what we could think of, or do to make life easier for everyone. First on my list would be the disappearance of COVID 19 and all its variants. With all the worry, anguish and disruption the pandemic has visited on everyone around the world, if all that could vanish, what a boon that would be for everyone. And it could happen: the pandemic of 1918 -1919 came and went, and to take a phrase from Shakespeare “Life's (COVID) but a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more”.
Shakespeare was writing about MacBeth, but I think the sentiment here applies even more fully to the world's population who would direct it even more fully to the pandemic.
So, wish #1 – no more COVID
Secondly, a wish for the return to all of the positive activities and attitudes the world's population participated in before the arrival of the virus. That people everywhere treated each other the way they wished to be treated, with life becoming more enjoyable, everyone happier and more contented.
Wish #2 – A more positive thinking population with a more constructive attitude
As for wish number 3 – I would leave that to each individual. No doubt that would result in a multitude of different aspirations: the ill and suffering would likely wish for better health;
the impoverished for better paying jobs; the homeless for their own homes.
I wonder what your wishes would be?
But it has also been written, that if
"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride" is a proverb and nursery rhyme, first recorded about 1628 in a collection of Scottish proverbs, which suggests if wishing could make things happen, then even the most destitute people would have everything they wanted.
Wish #3 - what do you wish for?
So, make your New Year's resolutions, or wishes, and then do what you can to help them come to pass. 2022 is in the hands of each of us – what we do will influence how the year goes for us - let's all do what we can to make it a great one!
Yours For Home and Country, Ruth Fenner, Provincial Historian
