Poorer yet hopeful

IT WOULD rank as particularly futile to survey the wreckage of 2015 for the express purpose of telling you, our readers, just what a sledgehammer of a year it has been.

Most of us are still spitting out shards of enamel from the kick in the teeth served up by the economic pile-drivers of currency obliteration and dreadful growth.

No doubt about it, the year has been brutal. Many of us have felt its lashes.

Yet here we are, once again, gathering in friendship, marking time with family, toasting our survival of a rocky age. Talk about creatures of habit. The ritual plays out faithfully every year – we peel off the remnants of what has passed and burnish our hopes for the coming cycle of 365 days, thankful for our lot but just a tiny bit hopeful of better prosperity ahead.

Some adhere to this form as required by their beliefs; others celebrate the moment simply for fostering all that is good about humanity.

Who, other than the grinch, would fault this pause in the conventions of our lives?

In this helter-skelter world of instant gratification, the yuletide interlude is more than carols and lights and liberally brandied upside-down puddings.

Think of it as a two-sided bookend, separating that which brought us to this point and that which is still to come.

As a juncture for taking stock, it’s perfect.

We simultaneously let go and prepare anew. And prepare we must, because at the end of it all, no matter that you’re poorer by a third (the rand has fallen about 30% since January 1 when it was trading at R11.55 to the dollar), what is done is done and the only path before us . . . is the one before us.

Come what may, it is better to stride forth, even if there is a tempest to overcome. A certain set of football fans are known to offer this advice on match day:

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