Looking ahead to 2023 with optimism

With a nod to former late night host David Letterman and his now long ago top ten list, this end of the year column will focus on what I think are the top ten optimistic possibilities for 2023, in no particular order. As some readers who have e-mailed me might wish, I will be sufficiently didactic so that my spins will be loaded with my biases — as ideologically diverse as they might be.

10: King Charles III will be a refreshing breeze this coming year.

Family feuding notwithstanding, Charles and Camilla are just the touch we all need. “The Crown” has made us Yankees well aware of the fractured fairytales in their backgrounds. Just perhaps in this regard they are not that different from us. Their Christmas card reveals love. His Christmas message was not loaded like President Biden’s with partisan rancor. Charles spoke to all of us whose loss of a loved one is recent and deeply felt--as with my wife and me:

“In the much-loved carol ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ we sing, ‘in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light.’ My mother’s belief in the power of that light was an essential part of her faith in God, but so was havingfaith in people, and I share this with my whole heart. It is a belief in the extraordinary ability of each person to touch with goodness and compassion the lives of others and to shine a light in the world around them.”

9: Lights will shine from far away and perhaps illuminate more than our small world.

We now have some incredible images of stars, planets,and even solar systems millions of light years from us. They offer us in combination with our goals to spread beyond our world, an unspoken invitation to seek just a bit beyond our grasp.

8: Power can be more than the ego of the rich and despotic.

Today this power is still trapped in a laboratory and may seem far away, but 2023 will likely bring more light to the promise of fusion power. It might power us to those far away planets, or at least free us to better “touch with goodness and compassion the lives of others.”

7: Medical advances portend longer and more joyful lives.

2023 should see improvements in addressing at least two of our major life killers: cancer and heart disease. I note the progress reported by the American Heart Association in addressing risk factors in children—something I wish was around when I was young. The breakthroughs in proton radiation therapy reported by our nearby Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center might well have addressed what killed my sisters.

6: Divided government may offer opportunities.

Gridlock is obvious. I look instead at the potential,beginning on January third, to force bipartisan action—perhaps even on the next subject.

5: Border progress looks promising.

Perhaps both major parties have woken up. We need immigrants. They refresh our societies. Yet real borders are like Robert Frost wrote about long ago in his famous poem, “Mending Wall.” Frost asks, “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out, and to whom I was like to give offense.” Yet he endorses his neighbors refrain, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.”

4: Peace hints and democratic signs are faint, but real.

Zelensky’s speech to our Congress was a possible turning point in that war. Putin and he are exchanging absurdities, but that’s the first step. I think back to my 1960s research on the peace negotiation ending the Boer War in South Africa, and my living through the negotiations bringing us out of the Vietnam War. Peace starts with absurd proposals. They may be faint, but signs of democracy come from the protests in China. Taiwan with its announcement of a longer draft appears to be wakening up—we need to do much more to helpdissents in China and freedom fighters in Taiwan.

3: The coming year may well be the flowering of the age of women.

We men have mucked it up. It’s the Iranian women who seemingly have taken up the wise macho challenge of Zelensky and translated it into action on the streets in their country. A coming age of women might bring us several Presidential candidates who happen to be women.

2: We may finally offer room for healthy nostalgia.

Despite his protestation within a gem of a guest column by Carl Biven published in this paper on Christmas, I for one get revitalized by stories I can identify with, such as his about a paperboy in the 1980s. More later about papergirls in recent years.

And 1: This might well be the year we begin to listen to each other — pronouns notwithstanding.

Happy New Year!

Contact Larry Little at larrylittle46@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Larry Little: Looking ahead to 2023 with optimism