Don’t just stay safe, stay strong

WHO isn’t glad to see the back of 2020? I remember images of gaunt, white-bearded, Old Year tottering out of the door, while New Year skips in as a small child, all clear-eyed and fresh.

This time both would be muzzled in masks . . . oh, stop it! The dreary show is not yet over, but many of us are desperate for new tunes to sing.

Mind you, if you try optimism, will people ask what the hell there is to be cheerful about? I’m with my heroine, the great Victorian writer George Eliot, who described herself as a ‘meliorist’.

In Latin ‘good, better, best’ translates as bonus, melior, optimus. So a ‘ meliorist’ believes that things are getting better. This isn’t optimism or pessimism, just the quiet philosophical belief (grounded in knowledge and experience) that humanity sees a slow series of improvements.

Of course, it may not seem so. But just consider life in 1900 (say) and you’ll understand. I recommend starting 2021 with the late Hans Rosling’s book, Factfulness — for incontrovertible evidence of ‘the secret, silent miracle of human progress’. As The Beatles sang: ‘It’s getting better all the time.’

Of course there are bumps in the road, setbacks, missed turnings, stumbles, side-tracks, not to mention strangers who might lead you astray. Stick to the trusty roadmap of your best instincts and you will survive and move forward.

But if you spend too much time on social media, you’re bound to get lost, dazed and confused. Life would be immeasurably better without Twitter.

A good resolution for 2021 would be to step away from all screens and look outwards and upwards. After the shocks of last year, do you have some resolutions for this one?

For a start, why not ditch that old ‘Stay Safe’ stuff and try ‘Stay Strong’? Me, I just want to work, create and love even harder and continue with everything that gives me pleasure, from family to chocolate and vodka.

Cheers to a Happy New Year.

Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, london W8 5TT, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.