All's Well

Someone somewhere is shining a light into the darkest places we inhabit.

- Jo Mooy

The final month on the calendar announces the end of the year. The sun’s low light confirms it. In ancient days, with the harvest put away, the ancestors went inside to wait out the winter, telling stories and planning for spring’s return. As the days shorten, I spend the “going inside” hours of December reflecting on the year past, while anticipating the flip of the calendar and what’s coming in the new year.

We didn’t end the world in 2019 despite our best efforts. Some of the highlights of the year are beyond startling. How did we get to the point where “mass shootings” were so normalized, that the headlines “More Mass Shootings Than Ever Before” read as an achievement? When the same headline “Hottest Year on Record” is repeated annually, do governments think it’s maybe time to do something? Did the heat waves across the planet this summer register loudly enough on human awareness? It did to the families of the 1,500 people who died in France. It definitely registered when India’s sixth-largest city faced an unprecedented 118 degrees, and 4.6 million people ran out of water.