Thoughts on a New Year, and a New World

Good morning, Charlie.

You don't know this, as evidenced by your infinite joy and good spirits, but you were born into a difficult time for the world. You don't yet have the capacity to understand lousy phrases that adults do: Recession. Unemployment rate. War. Insurgency. Casuality. Genocide. Your eyes are too bright to show a recognition that these terrible things exist.

I'm glad you don't know about such things. It's not time for that yet. However, I want you to understand that this is the way of the world you were born into. While you don't know of this sort of hardship, your parents do, your family does, your country does.

Why would I tell you about this now? Because I want you to know that soon after your birth, the world was poised to change. Tomorrow the United States has a new president taking office. This is not to say that the previous president is responsible for all that is wrong, or the new one can make everything better. What the new president represents for many of us in the United States (that's your country) and the rest of the world is something called hope. Hope that an end will come to some of these hardships and struggles. Hope that unnecessary war doesn't have to be a way of life, and opposition to war is not an opposition to patriotism or freedom. Hope that differences in humans are something to celebrate.

You can't have hope if all you've ever known is happiness. At this point in your life--coming on seven months--you don't need hope. You need love, security, exploration, nutrients, and sleep. But life is long. All of us eventually struggle, whether worldwide (as we are doing now) or just through something personal. In those times, it's healthy to look back at our roots, our heritage, and our upbringing for a sense of strength and a guide of how to take on whatever we face.

When it's time for you to do just that, I want you to be able to understand that you are a child of hope, that you were born in what I believe will be a time of moving from something not good to something spectacular, something spiritual, something that reminds us that life can be bigger and better than ourselves.

If you know you have that within you, then maybe you'll understand what to do in the future when the world again needs hope. Love you, kid--Dad