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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

opinion

COLUMN: 2016: Goodbye and good riddance

At the end of fifth grade, my classmates and I were issued IDs in preparation for our transition to middle school. On them was a seven-digit student ID number. Everyone’s ID number started with the same four numbers, though: 2016. Our high school graduation year.

Back then in 2009, 2016 was an almost unimaginable mile marker in my life. I could hardly formulate an idea of what my life would be like in 2016. I can remember one thing, though: I was strongly convinced that 2016 was going to be a great year.

I have one thing to say about that former belief of mine: LOL.

In 2016, we mourned the deaths of many icons, from David Bowie to Prince, Alan Rickman to Muhammed Ali and Harper Lee. We dealt with incredibly divisive questions of religion, national security and immigration in the wake of more ISIS attacks, the one perhaps most notable to those in the West (but not the most deadly of the year) being the driving of a truck through a crowd of people in Nice on Bastille Day.

Britain shockingly voted to exit the European Union. In America, we had a presidential election – and a bitter, ugly one at that. There’s a deep chasm in our public consciousness; before the election even took place, 62% of American voters said they were less proud of America because of the election.

The issue of police brutality remained forefront throughout the year, and climate change is still an imminent threat, and it was for the most part ignored during the election.

And, of course, the most distressing event of all: the death of Cincinnati Zoo gorilla Harambe.

I jest with the last one. Somewhat.

Really, though, I think we can all agree that 2016 has been, to say the least, painful for most of us. In the final weeks of the discouraging horror that is 2016, it’s hard to face 2017 – which will be here in a little more than three weeks –with any sliver of hope or optimism.

So how do we move forward from this? How do we keep going when it seems that we have lost faith in ourselves as a country and perhaps as a people?

Well, we can take a leaf out of the books of our forebears by simply picking ourselves up off the ground, taking a deep breath and continuing on our way.

I am forever oscillating between the notions that midnight on January 1 is something to celebrate and something to cynically scoff at as sentimental nonsense.

On the one hand, it seems ridiculous to believe that one day out of the year should be singled out as somehow more significant than the rest, as somehow possessing powers to transform and cleanse us and our lives.

In those same ways, though, the concept of a new year is extraordinarily appealing. Even though I often believe that January 1 is nothing more than an arbitrary date on the calendar, there’s always a tiny piece of me deep down that has faith in the metaphorical wiping of a slate. A tiny piece of me that has optimism for the uncertainty of it all, for the seemingly endless possibility of it all.

So yes, 2016 was pretty terrible. But let’s give 2017 a chance before we hurl it into the trash bin just yet.

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