Have you ever had one of those moments when you realized that not everyone was on the same page?  Not all on board?  I had one of those moments yesterday.  And then I realized that it’s because it doesn’t exist.  Because people don’t read – they just wait for the movie to come out.  And because I’m not on a boat.

Instead, I’m bobbing around in the ocean wearing little inflatable arm floaties.  Periodically they grow limp, and I tread water while I blow some more air into them.

I’m not alone.  I’m holding hands with other people who have arm floaties too.  And they’re hanging onto more people with arm floaties and we’re actually a little cluster of floaty people, bobbing around on the ocean together.

It gets a little frustrating, because there are also these people on jet skis who ride around us, pointing and laughing.  They speed close and shoot water at us.  Then they laugh and zoom away.

I can see a cruise ship in the distance.  The people on the cruise ship don’t notice our little group of floaty people.  They’re too busy goofing off in the pool and eating at the buffet.  I wonder if they realize that the 24 hour buffet sign is more like a hope than a promise.

But as I look further into the distance, I can see that my little cluster of floaty people is connected to other clusters, and we’re really a huge web of floaty people, as far as the eye can see.  We’re a floaty brigade.

I’m going to try to remember this when I talk to other floaty people.  When I expect them to be on board, I’ll remind myself that there is no “on board.”  The ocean is vast, and their little section might look different from mine.  My floaties are pink, but maybe theirs are blue or yellow, or polka-dotted.  A few of them even have pool noodles and inflatable crocodiles.  (Sometimes I wish I had a pool noodle.)  But we’re all floaty people.  We are all getting sprayed by jet ski people, and we’re all watching the same cruise ship, even if we have different perspectives.

Speaking of the cruise ship, I really hope they remembered to pack their life jackets.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rdeetz/ / CC BY 2.0

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Happy Friday, peeps.  And happy New Year, everyone!  Or everyone on the Gregorian calendar that is. (Wikipedia = time suck.)

To be honest, until I got back online yesterday morning, I hadn’t even registered that today would be the first day of a new decade.  But it seems that over the last week, everyone else has been trying out answers, drawing diagrams and making tons of lists.  From lists of the most influential people to lists of the most important movies of the decade, we’re engaging in a collective process of taking stock, trying to come to terms with the last decade, what it means for us and for our future.  I would prefer if we did this – reviewing and setting goals, personal and societal – all year round.  But it doesn’t seem to work that way, so here we are: trying to draw some sort of conclusion from the last ten years.

I don’t usually make predictions.  If you had asked me a year ago where I would be now… let’s just say I would have been very wrong (never, ever would have guessed married!).  My life has been anything but predictable.  And if I can’t make accurate guesses at my own life, which is theoretically within some measure of my own control, how could I begin to guess at anything else?

But this year I’m going to hazard a guess at 2010.  Why?  Because I just have a gut feeling about it.  And I hope that I might be right.

Resilience

I predict that ‘resilience’ will be a defining term of the year, and possibly even the decade, to come.

What is resilience?  The New Oxford American Dictionary defines ‘resilient’ as:

adj. (of a substance or object) able to recoil or spring back into shape after bending, stretching, or being compressed. <SPECIAL USAGE> (of a person or animal) able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.

Take note of that special usage.  That’s the one.  But add community to the little list.  “Of a person, animal, or community.”  Add economy.  Add culture and society.  Add civilization and species.

I’ll probably be writing a lot more about resilience this year, and I hope that I won’t be the only one.  In the meantime, here’s wishing everyone a resilient new year, individually, communally, globally.  Happy 2010!

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1. Until the New Year, Happy Holidays