31 Dec Ushering in the New Year

2010 was a frightful year. This can be stated unequivocally across the globe. I’ve caught myself jumping up and down in tirades and frustrations. It is in this vein that i am reminded of Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History.

A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

So it is that we move on from this year. It is time to wake up from our deadened sleep. History doesn’t have to be one big catastrophe. We are each of us creating history in our every days – in the choices that we make, in the way we choose to live our lives.

Being in academia can be stunting at moments. We are held to a high degree of critical engagement that depends on particular lenses for understanding the world. But today, i’d like to face the world, not as an academic but as a human being without label, not with an eye of criticality but with an eye of compassion, not with frustration and despair but excitement and hope.

The tree outside my office window is home to everything from tiny fluffy birds to a family of raccoons. In this one tree, birds and animals find food, shelter, personal drama, and triumphs, and i find beauty and comfort. In many ways, the tree is a reminder that life is about all of these things – the ups and downs of daily living, the endless cycle of life and death, living and dying. The winds of paradise beckon.