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“It’s Christmas time, people are dying…”
— Unreleased Beatles Song (2024)
“Surely it can’t get any worse” — Proverb
I disagree with the date. Fundamentally, I disagree that it is Dec. 9, in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty Four, because the entire year has gone by entirely too fast and I need it to stop what the hell it was January like a week ago. What is going on?
At some point, it does really feel like things get worse and worse as the years durdle on. COVID-19 was a mess, and we went from COVID-19 to inflation troubles, economic troubles, more regular-old troubles, then just the straight up Troubles for a second there. And in no way has it gotten any easier.
At the same time, I face the prospect of heading into yet another year with the sinking feeling that we’re in for a slate of things going wrong in every possible direction and in ways that nobody could ever expect (except for the boys in suits at the CIA, who I assume are keeping tabs on everything that ever happens).
With how bad things have gotten, it feels remiss to go into the new year feeling any form of hope. Like, how do I justify it? Nothing’s gotten particularly better in the last few years, and as a bleeding-heart liberal, I don’t particularly like the way the country as a whole is moving. I care greatly about the United States, and nothing matters in my bubble here in College Town, USA, but I have friends, family, people I care about put in harm’s way by policies that are being floated by the administration.
We are at what could be considered a bleak time for the U.S., and that’s nothing compared to how the rest of the world has been handling the last half decade. France is in the middle of the Frenchest thing I’ve ever seen, South Korea just tried to… do a coup? I think? I’m not sure. Ukraine remains under threat from Russian invasion, this is the hottest winter in a very long time and one of the hottest summers. I’ve never seen temperatures greater than 100 degrees F (I’m not translating that to Celsius) in this frequency, and I lived in Tucson, Arizona.
And man, I’m not even touching the Middle East. But I still feel some sort of hope, and I’m only partially sure why. The day after the election, a few of my friends got the idea to paint the Fence. They talked to a few more people, and before long, Carnegie Mellon saw one of the largest Fence-paintings in history, with a headcount over 150 at points. It was a huge deal, and that fence, shouting “WE WILL RECLAIM THE FUTURE”, was held for a week after its painting, come rain, shine, sleet, or snow. I saw people sitting outside in the cold, holding that Fence because it mattered. No matter how bad times seem, no matter how scary the future seems, that fills me with a sense of hope I’ve never had before. It’s beautiful — people sitting out in the cold to protect a fence. Sure, it’s not going to change the world, and it’s not going to matter outside of our little bubble on Carnegie Mellon’s campus, but I don’t feel for a second that those factors diminish it in any way. What matters is that people were there. What matters is the outpouring of love and support. What matters is that people are not alone in these times. We will reclaim the future. 2024 has been a mess, but it’s a mess we will survive. For those of us who didn’t, we will thrive, because that is what humans have always done. So, I’m hopeful for 2025. I’m always going to be hopeful for the new year, regardless of what the previous year had been. It’s an opportunity to start anew, it’s an opportunity to believe in something new. Here’s to a very happy new year, Tartan readers. I’m sure this one’s going to be something special.