“And to you. We sure need a good one.”

That’s what a friend just texted me when I texted him to say “Happy New Year.” I’m surprised and not surprised by how many of my friends feel the same way (the sentiment seems to be the status du jour on Facebook).

I haven’t written about it here until now, but on October 20th I was in a pretty big car accident. I don’t want to go into it now, but let’s just say that I was forced to participate in someone else’s accident as he plowed into me at what was probably more than 80 miles per hour as he was desperately trying to get somewhere else far too quickly. I’ve been dealing with that in the nine weeks since, and I’m almost ready to write some more about it here — maybe — but here’s the big takeaway:

I’m glad to be here. Really.

And while I know there’s a lot of struggle going on out there, around the country and certainly around the world, most of us have it better than we know.

From the perspective of someone who gets as many meals a day as he likes, who has a place to live and a life to share with family and friends, who has the pleasure of books and music and the arts, who is engaged in his community and who has, for the most part, his health, 2010 was a pretty good year. Will 2011 be better for many of us? I think so. Will it be worse for others? Absolutely. But whatever the future, that artificially carved into 12 months future, holds for us, we should make the most of it and most of us should recognize our general good fortune.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 31st, 2010 at 8:38 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.