Wanted: small thoughts

No more grand designs, thank you

As the Year of Our Lord 2017 fades fast into all-encompassing history, the great theories of the past lie scattered about like the discarded wrappings of Christmas presents a child might have gone through in his search for the one gift, he once told himself, that would change everything, especially his boring life.

Please consider this a defense of boredom, of the workaday tasks that await after the glamour of the holidays have passed. For lo and behold, the garbage still has to be carted out and the complex problems of every family still patiently tended to. Even though the wise among us know there is no magical solution to all our problems and challenges except hard work and diligent attention to detail.

Let’s face it: It’s something of a relief, isn’t it, to pile visiting family and friends into their cars and wave them all goodbye so we all can get back to our own lives. Who knows, they may prove quite challenging and exciting and worthwhile even without all the glitter we’ve been so busy spreading over them during the holidays.

Whew. Enough of all that. It’s time to pay the rent, look for a new job, and get on with life as we know it instead of how we imagined it could be when all the stardust was being sprinkled over it. Truth to tell, aren’t you glad that’s all over with for a season? Not just a season of the year but a season of politics and political rhetoric. Please, no more political flimflam — just solid work. By now it should be as welcome as it is healing.

The quotidian tasks of life, the daily wear and tear of it, now loom large in our lives once again, for which we can say a small prayer of thanksgiving. Nothing grand, please. Grand plans, like grand meals, can give a body indigestion. No, thanks, we’ll pass on the dessert and concentrate on our deserts. And to see that we’ve earned them fair and square, or are justly condemned for them.

As it is with people, so let it be with nations. Let’s work on the ordinary give-and-take of negotiation with our neighbors, especially our nearest ones like Canada and Mexico. Let’s strengthen our historic, indeed familial ties with those nations that, together with us, form the English-speaking world. Soon enough, as the inevitable cultural shifts set in, we might be able to speak of ourselves as part of the Spanish-speaking world, too.

It’s far more important — in the long run or short — to see that the kids get to school on time just as the rest of us get to work on time than to fashion Great Thoughts that are less great than just fanciful. How measure whether a life is a success or a failure or something in between, anyway? Surely it’s not by the material goods accumulated and then left behind when, as we all do, the time comes to leave the stage.

Success in life can’t be what one of the James brothers called it — a bitch goddess that demands that all pay her homage. Maybe the best measuring stick for a life well or badly lived is no measuring stick at all. Which would eliminate the small-time competitiveness that moves too many of us as we go from one oh-so-important task to another. Instead of just letting go of all of that and choosing not to hit the Snooze button but to get up and be one of the millions who set this world into motion every day. They surely are the true heroes of this or any other age.

So here’s a New Year’s toast to all those heroes and heroines who don’t act heroically but just do what they know must be done. Surely that is heroic enough. More than enough. Well done, neighbors and friends. It’s time to celebrate yourselves — and find that what you’re celebrating most of all is life. To life, friends!

Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.