Welcome to the final issue of the Undercurrent for 2016, a year which can broadly be summed up as having been a brutal one – at least from a big picture perspective. As January approaches, I expect we will be seeing lots of ugly footage recapping the past year’s celebrity deaths, mass shootings, “terrorist” attacks, incidents of police brutality and a few notably shocking decisions made by angry voters.
The Internet, however, has told me that 2016 did bring the world some good things. The population of wild tigers has gone up from 3,200 to 3,890 since 2010 and giant pandas are not longer considered an endangered species. A recent HIV study in the UK has yielded positive results, with a man who was treated showing no signs of the virus. The “ice-bucket challenge” funded a breakthrough in ALS. Child mortality rates are down everywhere, and keep going down. A solar-powered plane circumnavigated the world. Coffee consumption has proved to curtail both suicide and cancer. There’s more, you can Google it.
With that, let’s end this year with a commitment to optimism. Not the, “everything will work out I can just rest on my laurels” kind of optimism, but the kind that remembers that our efforts count.
If in 2017, you find yourself in a moment of despair I offer you the pages of this newspaper. Every week, you will find the stories of your friends and neighbours here on Bowen working to make things better in whatever way they know how. If their stories are not enough to lift you up and into action, then reach out and ask for what you need because I am sure that the generosity of this place does not stop at pushing cars out of snow-banks.
See you at the polar bear dip.
