FRIDAY JANUARY 11, 2013, 11:15 AM
"This is a year we'll never forget."
Every December, someone inevitably says this, but rarely is it true. 2012, though... this one might deserve it. Especially in New Jersey.
It started inauspiciously enough, I guess; no great, snowy winter, no wildly rainy spring to raise the floodwaters. All was serene, quiet.
It was summer's heat, though, that felt as if it brought the madness: the Aurora shootings, the burning of the Libyan embassy, the never-ending talk of economic collapse and a second recession. Hurricane Sandy and the subsequent blackouts. The absolutely brutal presidential campaign.
Then, as if that was not enough, there was the final blow: the bloody massacre at a Newtown elementary school that is still so difficult to comprehend, so horrifying, that no possible combination of adjectives can do it justice.
I will say it frankly: I have seen enough of this year. By far. And even though I do a moderate job at coping with it - mostly by writing this column - 2012 has proved as unnerving to me as it has to anyone else. Sometimes I too wonder if the world is going mad, or why so often the bad news seems to outweighs the good.
But even in this year that was blanketed in the worst that humanity had to shovel, there were moments of awe that proved we are still (I think) moving forward as a whole. Thank science for this.
The Mars Lander, appropriately named "Curiosity," landed on an alien planet and sent back information every day about a world that human eyes will one day look on firsthand. The Large Hadron Collider in Europe continued to amaze and performed test after test to slowly unlock the mysteries of the subatomic world and further blur the line where science and philosophy meet.
And in late October, a former Austrian paratrooper amazed the world by making a 24-mile freefall that proved that the human spirit is every bit as present (and important) as our intellect.
Then, of course, there were the smaller, more personal epiphanies that many of us came upon as a result of 2012's hardships. I learned that a world without electricity is not all that daunting (and not wholly unattractive) and that candlelight casts a far more gorgeous glow than an LED ever could. I remembered how dark the night actually gets and that nature not only does not really give a damn about us, but also has quite a bit more power than I recalled.
I learned that I need to get away from technology and Twitter and Facebook and phones, even though I love them, in order to quiet my own mind.
Now, as our calendars flip to 2013, let us not make the ridiculous resolutions that we won't keep or the promises to do that which we will never do; after last year, that should seem trivial and stupid.
Instead, let us pause just once to appreciate what is around us, whatever that may be - our youth and our strength, our age and accomplishments, our knowledge or wisdom. Just today, while things are still calm, because our lives so often end "en media res."
"Dum vivimus, vivamus," as the saying goes - "while we live, let us live."
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
