If Christmas is the festival of light, New Year’s Day is that of the clearing that takes place. Spring cleaning in winter. The opportunity for an assessment and the sorting necessary to combine in the present the contours that we had imagined for the future. The year that has just passed will have been intense on all levels and will have quickly eclipsed a global pandemic which has often had its back. The immense capital of sympathy with which our politicians had stocked up melted like snow in the sun and we witnessed this desolate spectacle as one contemplates glaciers which melt and heat up: with bewilderment and a solid return to cynicism. Walking along our “dirty and side streets” (to quote Georges Dor), we have the impression of now living with the stigma of a huge bankruptcy. “These subways full of drowning people” (another words taken from a song, this time by Brel) no longer have anything of a metaphor and we no longer know where to start to “rehumanize” so many people adrift , so many already old children who are losing more and more contact with reality. A reality made of economic harshness, stigma, loneliness.
From this dark observation, there will always remain gratitude. From 2023, I will remember the smell of forest fires which filled my room in Montreal, one morning in June. Then of these fires, those of Manon Cyr and Isabelle Lessard, respectively mayors of Chibougamau and Chapais. Two admirable and inspiring women, visibly… sacred. Two women whose action and unifying speech continue to arouse respect and admiration. Gratitude also towards all these so-called “shadow” workers who produce light day after day with next to nothing. These community workers, volunteers (there are thousands of them!), caregivers who will never know ovations but whose commitment elevates more than it demeans, inspires more than it disappoints, builds more than it destroy. In these times when planetary wars are added to our countless internal wars, gratitude is a renewable ingredient that allows us to separate the wheat from the chaff, to stand up to gloom. May 2024 be one of gratitude that encourages us despite everything enlighten us, much more than extinguish us.
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