It came as something of a shock early today to find out that my last posting was dated August 29, 2021.
I tried to understand why?. There are a ton of explanations and excuses; the bottom line is that rhythm and reason for this shoddiness on my part are not important.
With the end of 2021 fast approaching, I am trying to take stock of the dwindling year. A year of ups and downs due to COVID19, but also a year of marginal achievement, on the whole, continued good health, travel to foreign parts, and the continued love of a wonderful partner.
All-in-all, I have been lucky. Maybe I should say blessed.
And what of the coming year, what does 2022 hold in store for me, for us, for Israel, for the world? A reprieve from the coronavirus? A return to what passed for normalcy before the epidemic striking the world in March 2020? I have no crystal ball, tea leaves to read. Not can I stargaze and see what awaits us.
I have a degree of trepidation about what is around the corner. And I also know that there is not much I can do to manage or control the future; not even my immediate future.
I’m not a royal follower, that said I was much taken with the recent comments of earlier this week regarding the passage of time. “None of us can slow the passage of time,” she said in a letter read on her behalf - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10209099/Edward-Wessex-delivers-Queens-General-Synod-speech-tells-regret-misses-event.html - a simple thought that says so much, and should serve as a yardstick for us all as time marches on.
As a counterweight, Albert Einstein said “You can slow the passage of time, by traveling at speed” It's Einstein's theory of relativity. Do they still teach this in schools?
But if we look at our lives, certainly here in Israel and throughout much of the developed world. We are already traveling it would seem at breakneck speed to achieve even more of what we have, and in many cases don’t surely need.
Much of our daily lives are driven not by us as persons but by the consumer market. How for example can we live without the latest Apple phone, a Telsa car, a new kitchen with all mod-cons? The list goes on and on and on. And who is to blame? We are of course for buying into the bullshit thrown at us on the radio, TV, Internet, and elsewhere. We buy into the hooray that is Black Friday.
Maybe we need to make a single New Year’s resolution and keep to it., namely the banishing of the desire, need to keep up with the Joneses, Smiths, or whatever name is given to the people across the street whose grass appears, at first sight, to be greener than ours.