2016, you bastard… What have we done to deserve you?
As this article goes to publish, news of Leonard Cohen’s death has just broken and it hasn’t been met with the predictable pang of sadness, but a collective and sarcastic, “Well that’s just bloody great!”
This year has been trying to say the least. Sure the sun has risen and set for the past 314 days (and thank you, we are grateful for that) but in those days a lot has been taken from us – and the things that have been given to us are things we mostly don’t want.
Bowie. Prince. Ali. Brexit. Pauline Hanson to the senate!
We also lived in constant fear of who would be the next leader of the free world and while some might have taken the result of this week’s election as a victory, many did not. To be frank, it felt like a death – or at least a very (very, very, very, very) bleak prognosis.
Now Leonard Cohen is gone – a singer/songwriter whose artistry Rolling Stone said was only matched by the likes of Paul Simon and fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell “as a song poet” (PS – leave Paul alone, 2016!).
Why is this happening now?
One netizen summed it up perfectly earlier in the year when they said:
“I’m not saying that David Bowie was holding the fabric of the universe together, but (gestures broadly at everything)”
Yeah, we feel ya. Something is squarely stuffing up the circle of life and what hope does 2017 hold?
Well, maybe we can look at it like this: Yes. We’ve had a shitty year. But what have we learned?
Firstly, we have perhaps learned to appreciate people while they are still here. The half-baked wave of online nostalgia that hits after the loss of an icon is one part sweet, two parts tragic. Why wait until the Starman has left our universe to let him know how much he influenced us? There isn’t a good enough answer to this question, except that we must do better to let people we love know how much we love them while they are still here to hear it. (But sidenote: if they don’t have Instagram/Twitter in heaven so I can read all my online tributes after I’m gone imma’ be pissed!)
Secondly, we’ve possibly learned we need to make a bigger effort to truly understand our friends and neighbours because we’ve been blindsided a bunch this year.
While we could sit back clicking our tongues and waiting for a huge bit of buyer’s remorse to kick in on the political side of things, this year has reinforced the fact than not everybody thinks the same. Not everybody’s experience of the world is the same and because of that, not everybody is going to vote the same.
Before we start the clever name calling, next time let’s try and have more rational conversations about the issues and actually hear the other side instead of getting the gist and then ignoring it. I think many would admit that this year tensions have been so high that once you hear a Brexit/Hanson/Trump supporter go off on a conspiracy tangent you just tune out and think, ‘idiot’. But the challenge now might be to tune in and try to think “why” in total and complete earnest.
Because if we can understand where our opponents are coming from we can perhaps try and get them to appreciate part of our argument, and on the flip side we could even be privy to some of our own bias.
It won’t be easy but clearly we’ve been ignoring some segments of our population for a long time and now people who think differently to us make up a large part of our global society. Bottom line now is we need to all learn how to negotiate and get along a lot better for the sake of our planet.
And for the ladies out there, what can we say…
We suffered a tremendous blow this week. Many men and women not only thought that Hillary was the most qualified, experienced and best candidate to succeed Barack Obama as president but, there was the added bonus that she was a woman. However, largely thanks to much of what has just been discussed above, the chance to have the first female president felt like it was unexpectedly ripped away from us. And while we here in Australia we’ve have already had a historic female leader in Julia Gillard, seeing a woman get elected into the White House would have been a symbolic shattering of the glass ceiling that would have had it’s influence scattered globally.
Right now we might feel cheated by those white men (and women) who came out in droves to tell us they don’t like girls playing their game but we can’t get lost in our sadness and anger. We have to pat ourselves on the back for getting so close and be brave enough to do it again when the opportunity arises. Yes, we might risk more heartbreak but in the words of a gutsy 21-year-old Hillary Clinton, “Fear is always with us but we just don’t have time for it. Not now.”
Finally, we have to hold onto hope. Cartoonist Bil Keane famously said:
“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.”
You don’t have to be a religious person to recognise the wisdom in those words and see how they apply to us now.
Basically, while we might think this year has taken so much away from us, we have to find the strength to not only give gratitude toward the things we do have, but have the courage to march boldly into the future knowing that while there might be more losses to come, there’s a whole lot more to be gained.
So 2016, while we muster up the cojones to do that, we’re exactly 50 days away from Christmas so we’re going to hope beyond hope you leave Santa the eff alone.
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