When I was around fourteen or fifteen, I told my stepdad that I wanted to make every day and year better than the last. He essentially said it was a lofty goal, and he wasn't wrong. The persepective I've taken to make this goal achievable is that every moment is necessarily better than the last because I have more experiences and more knowledge. Every step forward is a step upward into a wider world. It's like quantum positivity. 2016 was a tough one to wrangle, though. It seems that we as a society have informally decided that this was the worst year in living memory. However, as we didn't have a global recession caused by our housing market crashing or suffer terror attacks that scarred the national psyche and propelled us into two wars, it wasn't the worst in my living memory.
The major downside that stays in people's minds are all the celebrity deaths we experienced this year. TypePad has the count on dead musicians from January 1 to December 31 of 2016 at 603. Earth Wind and Fire's Maurice White, Prince, David Bowie, and Leonard Cohen are some of the biggest names we lost. Muhammad Ali – Olympian, heavyweight boxing champion, and civil rights icon – died at the age of 74. Legendary BYU football coach LaVell Edwards died at the age of 86 two days before the year ended. The day before, legendary actress Debbie Reynolds died, following her daughter Carrie Fisher – Princess Leia, the first woman I ever looked up to – offstage. We lost George Michael on Christmas and “Everything She Wants” was almost all I could listen to for a week.
A gorilla named Harambe was shot and killed for posing a threat to a child, and the social outcry led to people voting for him – a dead gorilla – for president, though not to the tune of thousands as was initially reported. The Presidential election was pretty uncanny. Donald Trump will be sworn in as president in less than two weeks. It's a bizarre world to keep waking up in. But we keep waking up, and as long as you draw breath on this earth you have something to be thankful for. And I don't mean to make some arbitrary list of positive things that happened in the U.S. – or abroad – in 2016. What I mean is that you have an opportunity to improve the world around you, starting in your community before looking at the bigger picture.
There are tons of things to complain about. If you're a lover of the arts, for instance, movies and music seem to be more repetitive all the time. Wall Street lacks regulation and it seems we're on the road to less, which will inevitably end in another crash. We lost a bunch of cultural icons, as if the Biblically-prophesied Rapture is God taking away all the heroes of our youth – the remarkable rather than the faithful. There is doom to be seen and said if you'd like that. There are metrics to inspire suffering.
But I suggest you look away from what you can't control and what leaves you despondent. Immerse yourself in the perspective that you can create change in yourself and the world around you. Make 2017 the year you finish your screenplay or go out for more auditions. Make 2017 the year you hold onto your resolutions instead of letting them fall by the wayside. Make 2017 the year you become more politically-informed and -active. Make 2017 the year you read and write more. This is your year to do with as you like. 365 days smarter and stronger and more experienced than before. 356 of them left. Don't let the flower wilt unattended. Don't let the opportunities fade.
This could be a worse year. Maybe Donald Trump and his cabinet will be as bad as I worry, and as quickly. Maybe society will crumble around us and we'll lose more artistic inspiration. Maybe at the end of the year it'll be all “2017 was worse than 2016.” But I'm making an effort to be less of a bummer, and I'm imploring you all to do the same. We've got a new government, and new holes to fill in our collective soul. And as much a relief as internet headlines saying “2017: Not as bad as 2016” might be, I'd be elated if we could bring ourselves to find “2017: The Best in Some Time.”
