What do we do in a year? A year, as the saying in Chado goes, of ichigo, ichie -- One Time, One Meeting; where each moment is precious and irreplaceable.
Do we do some thing momentous or do we spend it watching electrons dance across a screen.
Do we spend it with family and friends, nurturing relationships or do we spend it hunkered down in a fortress of our own making, protected from a cruel outside world.
Do we spend the year creating a nest egg or do we spend it helping to enrich the already rich with poor financial decisions.
Do we spend the year putting ourselves at risk or making ourselves comfortable.
Is there a way to distinguish this year from the last and are we busy with plans to make the next twelve months unique.
And why do we commemorate the New Year, a new year of birthdays, weddings, births and deaths.
Another year for light to travel from the known and unknown universe, revealing super novae, colliding galaxies, and the birth and death of stars.
Another year of medical research, another of deciphering the human genome and another year closer to cures for incurable disease.
Another year of another class of medical students, trained and released out into the world.
Another year on the water, soaking up the best and the worst that Lake Michigan has to throw at us.
Another year of art: of drawings and of sculpture. Both attempted in a futile effort to search for unobtainable solutions to unanswerable questions.
Another volume in the sixty-year history of The Chicago Shimpo and a few more words put down -- ink on paper -- from my neurons to yours. Remarkable that.
So Happy New Year, I hope you have some sparkling champagne or some cold sake to reminisce on the old and welcome the New Year in. 2007 -- the most miraculous year of all our years yet.
