Look ahead, not back as 2009 starts

It's a new year.

And many of us just might be ripping down the 2008 calendars with a good-riddance vengeance.

It surely was not a year to remember if it found you among those who lost their jobs. Or if your retirement nest egg fell and cracked on Wall Street. Or if you lost your dream home to the nightmare of foreclosure.

We have weathered economic storms before. But in 2008, it was a hurricane.

Happy New Year? It has to be, because it can't be unhappier than the year that just ended.

But is this how we want to start a new year? Content that, well, things just can't get any worse, can they? - and having no hope that things can get better?

Certainly it is easy, understandably easy, to think this way given the deep economic pain inflicted in 2008. A pain that will not go away today or tomorrow.

But amid the uncertainty you can be sure of one thing - life, as hard as it may be, will go on.

And many new and wonderful things will happen in this new year. Things to look forward to and to celebrate.

Babies will be born. They will protest their entry into the world with loud wailing. But soon enough the shock of being pulled from the womb will wear off, and as they discover the newfound comfort of being nestled in their mothers' arms, they'll feel, for the very first time, that life is worth living. And they will come to feel that way many times more as the years go by being nestled in the blessings of family.

New friends will be made. And the bond from this companionship will hold life together when it seems to be falling apart.

New lives will begin as couples take their wedding vows. They will promise to be there for each other, for better or for worse, finding strength and mirth in matrimony.

Even new jobs will hopefully be found, bringing back paychecks and challenges so vital to self-worth, dignity and security.

And just as it's certain that life will go on, so will the opportunities be there to make the most of that life.

Regret, despair, pessimism and hopelessness have never stripped the sturdy gears that keep the world turning. It keeps on spinning in space, giving us light and night. And what we do in our own little worlds, in all the hours between many a sunrise and many a sunset, is what matters. We should milk all the joy, hope and happiness we can from all that we can control - this year and every year.

As the late journalist and New York Times theater critic Brooks Atkinson once wrote:

"Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go."

May it be a Happy New Year for all our readers.