Scattered but Optimistic

New Year's Eve morning, no matter the year, begins with me awake early, eyes closed and mind pensive of the (hopefully small) final list of needs still left to be done in the calendar year. The pressure is self-inflicting for the sake of poignancy and is based on melodrama absurdly passed on through generations in my family. We gather, we drink, we hug, we eat. Champagne is secondary and simply the intermission in a long, late-owl feast fueled with alcohol. At minutes to go from the strike of midnight, we prepare. The hosts of the year pass around to each of the guests 12 grapes which will be eaten one second at a time as the clock strikes twelve. This will serve as well wishes to all for prosperity. Prosperity is something we all in our recession fervently desire. As the countdown to another chance, another start begins anew. At midnight, we cry as the regret from the year just passed collides with the hope that ushers in the new. The hugging (crying), the smiling (kissing) and the eating (drinking) on a holiday that really is the start of a renewed possibility are the solemn occasions of my youth. Today, optimism carries me where the innocence that once surrounded me once did. I'm thankful for that ability, entrusted for the purpose of setting it forth year after year.

I carry forth Optimism into next year. Optimism is what has become of the hope bred from emotions carried over every year with no resolve, the continued aching after eight years of surviving in a world gone very wrong. How things so far away impact us so close should be a strengthening way to bring the world closer together to break through the hate. President-elect Barrack H. Obama's roll call was led with that hope. We now go into a year where that same unknown from eight years ago - before this madness came to our country, in a mad time when a Presidential election was being won by the votes of a mere seven Supreme votes - seems capable of being overshadowed by a little thing called hope. Tonight is as it was eight years ago on this night, when I was fresh in to New York City, more naive, but just as fiercely strengthened with the unknown. Eight years of walking in a world surrounded by the survival of good over evil has sprouted a world eager for honesty and freedom and for all of humanity , all man- and womankind, to work it out for the sake of our own.