For 2008

The Berlin Mom is home again, will be facing radiation and chemo-therapies in the next months to ensure that, despite the successful removal of all cancerous tissue detectable, no malignant cells are flitting around to give rise to some new tumor elsewhere. So we will be caring for this mom to get through this ordeal, but in the knowledge that this is a battle for maintenance of health rather than for defeat of any specific malignancy.

This encourages us to think of the wonder of being, something that only we as humans are able to do, as we are the only creatures who, mortal, can consider that mortality.

So in 2008, whatever the malignancies affecting the world - and there are many, so many I've alluded to here, far too many to list again -, let us simply strive TO BE, to be thinking humans feeling what it means to know we will one day die, loving the life that we can enjoy by thinking and loving, living in this world so as to let it continue to be a place hospitable to human life, to thought, to love. Perhaps we can make the world even more livable for thinking beings.
Let us not fall into the dark contemplation of death, for that is the true victory of nihilism; let us not await some pie-in-the-sky glory or joy, for that is nihilism's destruction of life : LET US BE WITH ALL THAT WE CAN BE ! That is joy here and now and then and in the future and for all time.

Dangers offer a chance to see the void into which all can be tumbled and out of which all can emerge ! Fear is a nihilistic mode of existence, one that cancels being and prevents us from considering the wonder of what it means TO BE !

And I will continue to think and speak and read and write and live and love with all my might in this coming year.