Here's to 2026

Well, my friends, this disastrous year is at an end.

As we all know, it didn't have to be like this. What we're going through right now was a choice. A choice that 77 million voters made. A choice that 90 million voters made by not choosing. And now listen to the wails and the gnashing of teeth. Now see garments rent and hair pulled out. Now see those who chose this in one way or another running around in panic, asking for someone to save them.

Of course, they were always their own saviors. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people on social media castigate us for "vote shaming". It seems that no one has any agency save for Democratic politicians. Not Republican. Not voters. Not non-voters. Not those who cast a desultory vote for the "lesser of two evils". As that skinny Black community organizer said, the most powerful person in any democracy is the citizen. And yet so many of us relinquish that power.

Why do we do this? Because, as a superhero's uncle said, with great power comes great responsibility. And we have been infantilized. We don't want that responsibility. We want to slough it off to others. Have others do the hard work of "convincing" us, "inspiring" us. As the poet sang: Freedom of choice / Is what  you got / Freedom from choice / Is what you want. Too many of us look outside of ourselves for answers. We want the gods to descend from the theater's vaults, setting the tragedy to rights and making everything better. That way we don't have to do any work. We don't have to peer into our own failures, or recognize our role in the world's tragedies. We say we want choice, but when offered a choice we dismiss it as not good enough. The choices on offer don't speak to our purity of essence. They don't allow us to feel righteous. We want to be the heroes in our own minds, but want to skip the part of the journey which the hero must undertake to find himself and fulfill his purpose. If it can't be delivered on the same day between 4 and 8pm, we scoff. 

I think of that old parable. A flood ravaged a town, and a God-fearing man climbed to the roof of his house to escape the waters. He was sure that God would save him. A neighbor came by in a canoe and told him to get in. The man said, "No, the Lord will provide." Afterward, a man came by in a motorboat and again offered to take him on. The man again demurred, placing his faith in the saving Hand of God. Then a helicopter hovered over him, dropping down a rope. All he had to do was take it. But he said, "No, I trust in the Lord." The waters came over him and he drowned. Upon getting to heaven, he remonstrated with God. "Why didn't you save me? I've always believed in you." And God said, "I sent you a two boats and a helicopter. What more could I have done?" Too many of us are like that man, convinced that some external force will set things to right, without us having to do any work. But in fact we are the only powers in this world. If God exists, he works through humans. The days of God walking with Adam and Eve are dead and gone. This is our world now, and no one will save it and heal it save ourselves. And too many of us either don't realize this, or realize it and reject it.

If we are to survive as a species, we need to put aside foolish beliefs. We need to dispense with the notion than someone besides we ourselves can save us. We are human beings. We are the zenith of Creation, for both good and ill. We are becoming as gods with our technology; gods can destroy as well as create. We need to put dispense with our pettiness, our vindictiveness, our narrowness of mind. We need to heed what I have come to learn in my time as a librarian: If we're not serving others, if we're not helping others to make this world better, we are nothing. We are wasting that one precious life with which we have been gifted. With full knowledge, we must accept the power we have innately in ourselves, and use it in the pursuit of tikkun olam. There may or may not be an afterlife; but we must live as if this life is all we have, and make it a fruitful, bountiful life. And we must make sure that those who come after us will not curse our names because we mired ourselves in trivialities of ideology and belief. Nothing is more important than this life we all share on this blue dot floating in the universe. There is no Planet B. Mars will not save us. Neither will space station colonies. This is it. This is what we have. 

Someone will decide the future. I'd rather it be ordinary people, seeking to live decent lives, not consumed by squabbles. Not revolutionary vanguards. Not technocratic masters of the universe. Not the indolent rich. Again, as that community organizer said, we are the ones we've been waiting for. That so many people misheard that to think that a Savior had come is part of the reason we are here. We are all the Christ. We are all the Buddha. We are all Enoch. We all have a direct connection to that mysterious universal life force. If we awake to that, there is nothing we can't accomplish.

I wish you all a very happy New Year, dear friends. It continues to be the privilege of my life to have helped create this community.