And Aren’t we So Damn Glad!
Well, that’s it folks. 2016 is finally coming to an end. For those of you who read our site regularly, you may have noticed that we put a new article every morning. Same time every day, carefully calculated to ensure that everyone across the world gets to see it at the best possible time. Today however, on the last day of 2016, I have broken the rules and written this at the last possible moment.
Why? Because each and every time I attempted to write this piece, another beloved legend was taken from this mortal coil. I was almost worried that if I attempted to write the piece just once more time, we would hear the shocking news that our Queen or Prince Philip had taken a nasty turn.
For the first time in a long time, I was honestly worried about tempting fate.
Then I sat back a moment and really thought about what 2016 had delivered us.
We did, yes, lose a number of our incredibly talented legends. The world was shaken by the death of David Bowie and it seemed to only get worse with Alan Rickman, Glen Frey and Terry Wogan also leaving us in the same month. For a few weeks the world of Facebook was aghast with comments like “the worst January ever”, roll on February, January has been awful.
Only it didn’t get better, did it?
I could list all the incredible names that we lost this year, but quite frankly, every single newspaper, TV show and Magazine has done that – and most are a little tired of being reminded of it now.
But it got me thinking. What else got us so riled up this year?
The Olympics? Surely they were a high point, right? I mean the opening ceremony had us all entranced – but then I guess no more so than the shocking state of the ‘green pools’ that we watched the body of Tom Daley gracefully drop into! What was that all about?
Tim Peake returned from his trip around the world. And by that I mean ACTUALLY around the world. His stint on the International Space Station lit a rocket under the backsides of children across the UK – with more children than ever choosing “Spaceman” as their job of choice when they get older.
Finally, it seemed that us Brits could reach the stars and Tim gave us all hope again.
Brexit and Trump happened.
I would like to write more about that, but quite frankly I fear I may get far too embroiled in my own anger. The mere mention of the names “Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Donald Trump” does nothing these days except raise my blood pressure even higher than it can peak when I find my children stood in front of crisp white walls with marker pens in hand.
Politics well and truly had the world gripped this year, for better or for worse. We made some awful decisions and allowed the world as we know it to become more racist, more separated and in a state of utter shock.
But hey – it’s all about reveling in one of the happiest and most drunken days of the year, so no one really wants to talk about politics, do they!
The fact of the matter is this – 2016 seemed to be a ‘s**t show’ in a lot of respects. We lost some of the biggest names in the world of TV, Music and Film. We let misogynistic, racist tangerine take the top spot in the white house and we stupidly seemed to listen to the ridiculous ramblings of Farage and allow the UK to walk away from the stability that is Europe.
It surely can’t get any worse, can it?
So we can all pick up our glasses of champagne, fill them over and over again and drink our way out of the worst year in history and into a New Year with an almighty hangover but happy in the knowledge that hey – at least 2016 is over.
But it doesn’t work like that, does it?
Sorry guys, I am here to burst that bubble you are creating around this unholy day. January 1st is not magical. It is not a massive red button that you hit when you want to re-set the world.
No – it’s really not.
The world is changing in ways that we can no longer control. Talent is leaving us because the talent we once had is now getting older, and when people get old they die. That is the way of the world.
The reason we are all so bloody scared and upset is because the more ‘talent’ we lose the more we realise that we are not scared of them leaving us, we are scared of what is left behind!
The Gods take Bowie, Prince, Muhammad Ali, George Michael, Terry Wogan… (I could go on forever and ever here) and they leave behind… Bieber. F-ing Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian! Really? Is this the talent our kids will be crying over in 50 years time? I think not.
As for politics and war, 2016 has been horrendous, but it has been that way because the world as we know it at the moment is broken. People are screaming for change and desperate to see something drastic happen. (They must be desperate, with Farage and Trump making sense to the world, we have to be in dire straits.)
War still threatens the lives of far too many on our planet. Poverty, disease and heartache flood every corner of the world… and what are we doing about it?
“We are going to hit the re-set button, that’s what. It will all be better in 2017. Cheers folks.”
Yep – that’s what we do.
Here is a little tip – as we head into a New Year – let’s get serious for just one second.
Just because we keep saying ‘2016 can do one’ nothing will change in 2017 unless WE change it.
People will still die, politics will still frustrate us and war will continue to create tears among those who feel powerless to help. But in 2017, stop blaming the year and start doing something productive about it. If you want change, affect it. If you want to help the helpless, volunteer. Stop acting like the world will reset the moment the ball drops. Because it won’t.
But you CAN make 2017 the best year possible… if you put one foot in front of the other and vow to change your world a little for the better. If everyone does that, maybe, just maybe, the ripples of change and positivity will cancel out all the negativity we have created for ourselves.
