Born in the 1950s, my earlier childhood was filled with fear of the Big One falling. Fallout shelter signs were displayed in public buildings and were very commonplace. We laugh now at “duck and cover” jokes, but it was a time shadowed by never ending threat. It did end, though, and I don’t even remember when those signs disappeared. The presence of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall were just givens. I never for a moment thought they’d come down in my lifetime, but then one day ... gone. Remember athletes defecting during the Olympics? Now our country has a large population of those from the former Soviet Block.

In my teens, Viet Nam was the focus of much of our news. The war that wasn’t a war seemed to go on and on. At first, cease fire declarations made me hopeful, but as time dragged on, they lost all meaning. It seemed as if the war would never end, but then one day, it did.

 As a people we’ve lived through many dark times. We’ve seen the various wars, political upheaval, financial crises, plagues, and drought. Each time, those affected must have thought that things would never change. Most of us, too, have lived through personal dark days, days we thought would never end, but they always did, they always do, and they always will. It’s almost as if things have a certain amount of energy, and when that energy runs out, it’s over.

As we begin a New Year, we are still involved in war. Although our troops are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, we call it a war on terror, one with no clear enemy and no foreseeable end. The threat of global warming looms as does our decades old energy crisis. Many think our financial future is far from secure, and politically our house is definitely not in order. Around the world there is so much violence, poverty, famine, and sickness.

Yes, there is cause for concern, but not despair. Things going the way they always do, in time these problems, too, will become memories and no longer reality. We don’t know how things will look this time next year, but anything is possible, and often when change happens, it happens fast. We are a resourceful people; often at our best when faced with the harshest of times. Let’s know that we will find our way out of any current hardship and find there is much to rejoice about in our future. Each of us can help make this happen more quickly and easily by keeping a picture of how we’d like things to be at the front of our minds. Aligning our thoughts and actions to this picture makes it that much more likely that we will find ourselves in a new and better place this time next year.