Searching For Hope In a New Year

I spent New Year's Eve alone in Washington. I could have gone to a party, but my plans went awry, and I ended up eating nachos and drinking lite beer in front of the TV set. It was not an unpleasant night, I usually stay home on New Year's, I'm afraid of drunk drivers, and also the road blocks that the police put up on major streets make me think of a police state, even though I know that it's for our own safety. That's the thing about police states, they exist for the safety of the population, and imply that we are a danger to each other.

I live in a safe and wealthy neighborhood, it all sort of happened by accident. My partner and I bought the house when DC was not as safe and wealthy as it is today, it was less expensive than buying a simple two bedroom condo in the trendier part of town. But DC elected a mayor that was friendly to big real estate, and suddenly, the nation's capital became a desirable place to live, if you could afford it. Lending rates were dirt cheap, and everyone wanted in on the boom. Me, I was an innocent bystander who got lucky, I was born in a ghetto, and have lived my whole life in iffy neighborhoods until now. I hate to sound like some whiny privledged upper-middle class American, but I sometimes wish that I were living in a place that was less safe, and more real. I wonder if our nation's safety has become a prison that we can't escape.

It's hard to hope, and it's hard not to. It's difficult to believe that we live in a caring nation that desires peace. As I watched the Times Square celebration in New York, I flinched at the sound of fireworks a few doors down, they reminded me of war. On the television, the sound of John Lennon singing about imagining a better world, contrasted sharply with the explosions in Washington. If I could break out of my prison of safety, I would brave the drunk drivers, I would live dangerously, I would get in my car and go to New York, and stand around in the wee hours of the morning and party with a bunch of strangers living in a place just like New York, not exactly the most safe city in America, but a hell of a lot safer than Washington. Because while America sleeps off a New Year's hangover, our nation wages war, a war for freedom and safety, a war for oil and American interests, a war that will keep us safe as long as we remain in this prison.

It's hard to hope, because in order to hope, you must place your faith in other humans, some who are a danger, some who only wish to live in peace, and the most dangerous of all, those who would take everything from you at the point of a gun in order to keep the engines running and the world economy functioning.

But it's harder to abandon hope, because then we have no way out of this maximum security prison, and no way to light the dark nights of our confinement, fearing that the contact of another dangerous human would put the knife in your back while whispering in your ear of dreams of peace and democracy.

Next year, on New Year's Eve, I'm going down to Union Station to get on the Accela to New York. I'll work early, get down to Penn Station just in time to catch the 3:00 pm fast train. I'll stand in a square with a bunch of other strangers and wait for the ball to drop, and I'll sing a song of hope, rather than listen to another American explosion. I want to break out of my prison and feel what it is to really live in the world with all of it's dangers and uncertainties and take my chance with the rest of the strangers.

Imagine Hope.

| +Save/Share | |