Editor’s Note 12/6

Story by Jacob Zlomke 

| Published Dec 6, 2011

December 6, eh? 19 days before Christmas, fewer than that until finals are over, and just a few short days longer until 2012 is here. The calendar has almost rolled over.

So, how was 2011 for you? What did you do? Was it, in general, a good year? Best year ever? Worst year ever? Did you make some one’s life better? Did someone make yours better?

I’m not generally much for reflecting--after all, what can I do about what has already been done? Nothing. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t, once in a while, take the opportunity to learn from that which has already been, because the past is rich with what we’ve done wrong and what we’ve done right. Those moments of clarity or moments of mistake equate to absolutely nothing if you leave them as moments in isolation. Instead, you must use them to develop your own character and help your own life unfold. Otherwise, what good are they? Your life just becomes a series of unrelated, disconnected moments where you made a good choice, a bad choice, or somewhere in between.

So, how was 2011? I would contend that it was a pretty good year. It’s been eventful, that’s for sure. But aren’t they all?

We started the year off with the Gabrielle Giffords shooting, then the world watched as the Tunisian government was pushed out the door. In that same January, an uprising in Egypt began and by February the military had assumed governmental control. Uprisings and protests soon followed in Libya, Bahrain, Tunisia and other Middle-Eastern countries. Still in February, residents in Wisconsin came out strongly to oppose an anti-Union bill. Fast forward to May, and Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight with U.S. forces. Over the summer, the country watched the Casey Anthony trial unfold. In July, there were terrorist attacks in Norway that shook the country’s foundation and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation began to crumble. In September, the very first of the Occupy protests began, putting in motion a nation-wide movement. In October Steve Jobs passed away and in that same month Moammar Gadhafi was killed. Occupy protests grew increasingly hot-tempered with clashes involving tear gas and pepper spray in different cities across the country. Last month, the Penn State scandal unwound.

And that’s just a few of the more headline-grabbing highlights from the year. Looking at only the previous list, the year seems pretty shit. A dark year full of tumult, change, and frightful uncertainty. But what about everything fantastic that happened as well? You need only turn a few pages over to Seeds to see all the beautiful music, movies, video games, and television shows that 2011 turned out.

What about yourself? Surely your year shouldn’t be dependent entirely on what happened independently of yourself. So what did you personally do this year? I went to my first music festival, I made a best friend, I moved out on my own.
Of course, there were also blindingly poor decisions. Without getting too specific, I was unnecessarily cruel, as we all have the capacity to be, to people that care about me on certain occasions.

And that’s that. In a very compact and digestible nutshell, that’s been 2011. So what do I have to learn from it? What connections can I draw to stop these from being solitary, isolated incidents? Well, I guess that’s for me to figure out.

In the mean time, take a few moments to look back on what you’ve done with yourself this past year, and what you’ve learned. Who knows, it might be good for you. We’ll see you in January.