Day 8: Not sad to say goodbye

January 3, 2010

As the holidays come to a close, we naturally reflect upon the past couple of weeks as either a wonderful experience or a miserable one. Luckily for me it was the former, as I had a very enjoyable holiday indeed. The fond memories I made over the past couple of weeks are ones that I will cherish for the coming months of extreme cold and occasional depression. There is one difference this year as I look back and that difference is the fact that we are ending what has been a very rough decade. "The Decade From Hell" as TIME Magazine proclaimed it, was one that was filled with world changing tragedies and a new unease that fill's all of our lives.

Now I could go on for pages about how this decade has been one of very few upsides(Trust me, my friends have heard me do this on numerous occasions and I can tell I am wearing them thin), but that is not what I would like to write about. Instead, I would just like to say a little something about those few who actually had a good decade during the past ten years. How must it feel to be one of the few who can look back on these years as a wonderful time in their lives. As silly as it sounds, I kind of feel sorry for them. It must be strange to hear about this so-called "Decade From Hell" and think the exact opposite.

Looking at it from this stand point puts an interesting spin on things, because it must kind of be a bummer to feel this way. I would imagine that you might feel bad for having it good while others are in such misery. I am not saying this to be condescending in any sort of way, quite the opposite actually. I mean it as I truly feel bad for them because nobody should be made to feel bad for having it good. You should not have to apologize to people just because you are in a good place. I guess what I am trying to say is that it seems like in our society, those who have it good often feel the need to justify the reason behind it.

I wish more people had a good decade but it really does not seem like it was the case. I personally felt like this decade was just one disaster after another. That doesn't mean that there wasn't any high points, because there were plenty. It was just that over all the major things I remember from the past ten years tend to be those of pain and suffering. Now this could be from this being my first decade as an (so-called) adult. That is possible, but it is also not the whole story. When I say this was a terrible decade, I say that because overall, we are no better off then we were ten years ago. If things progressed at all, it was very minimal. If anything, it was just a decade rife with change, often for no other reason as if to just change for the sake of changing.

The other end though, me saying this was a lousy decade is not a negative one at all. I say it has been a lousy decade because I am very positive about the future. I truly believe this next decade is going to be a very good one, filled with less stagnant thinking and a push towards an eventual return to greatness. I say it was a lousy decade because I think in comparison to the teens, it is going to be looked back on as the bumpy road we all had to go through to get to the next place in our lives. I mean this to be taken from a personal journey stand point and as a journey we will all take as a society.

I keep on writing more each day, which I suppose is part of me figuring out what this thing is going to be. I am still not sure and probably will not figure it out for quite a while. Either way though, I am going to continue to write each and every day until I figure it out. Not that I will stop once I do learn the eventual purpose of this thing(if it has one), but it will make it easier for me to understand the "why" behind the reason I am doing it in the first place.