Day for optimism and enthusiasm
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Today is, really, a day like any other.
The sun will rise here at 7:43 a.m. and set at 5:04 p.m. We will get one more minute of sunlight today compared to the day before. Some people will be born and others will die. The cycles of life will continue as they always have.
Still, today is New Year’s Day.
We’ve pulled the 2013 calendars off our walls and replaced them with fresh 2014 versions. It’s the one day of the year where we all can feel like we have a clean slate.
There are 365 days of free-and-clear potential before us. Along with the standard resolutions to be more physically fit, trim pounds, clean the basement, sock more money away or organize the sock drawer; this could be the year where we make the honest effort to worry less, work smarter, have a better outlook, treat each other with more kindness and “try to contribute joy to the world” as the late movie critic Roger Ebert put it in his eloquent memoir, “Life Itself.”
Aside from our individual aspirations this new year, there is some hope that 2014 will be better for this region and the United States as a whole.
Job growth appears, at last, to be gathering some steam after five years in the doldrums, consumer and business confidence is starting to be more robust and household debt is declining. It might not yet be time to strike up “Happy Days are Here Again,” but the moment might be opportune for the band to start warming up.
What lies ahead in the next 12 months remains hard to predict. But today is a day where we can feel energized, optimistic and hopeful for the future.
Goran Persson, the former prime minister of Sweden, said it well: “Let our New Year’s resolution be this: We will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word.”