Editorial: The rear-view mirror of 2019
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There is a tendency to look back on the past year with nostalgia or to draw a curtain while marching fiercely into the upcoming year with hopes and plans for better.
Take a quick scroll through your phone or click around your favorite television stations and you’ll probably be confronted with scads of what-we-leave-behind stories. Who died in 2019? What was the biggest political story? What was the great comeback? Who was the Person of the Year? What did we do right? What went so wrong?
You’ll also see the other side. There is no shortage of plans for what comes next. How do you lose weight? What is the best exercise plan? Do this to save money. Do that to get organized. This is the how to stay engaged in your community. That is the ticket to being politically active. Be a better parent. Be a better employee. Be a better person.
It is the story of every New Year’s Eve, where the clock ticks down the final seconds of the old and we wake up — some of us noticeably bleary — in a whole new world full of opportunities to fix the bad and improve the good.
We have to recognize the truth in the old George Santayana quote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
The transition from 2019 to 2020 has to be like driving a car. While the destination lies in front of us — a future that we all hope is filled with prosperity and promise and some way to fill in those potholes in our path — we can’t negotiate the road just by staring straight ahead.
We need that rearview mirror to see what the consequences have been, what the dangers sneaking up behind us are and even what we may have left behind that is worth retrieving.
Government and our communities have to do the same. Reflection and resolution can’t just be something that happens with individuals.
In 2020, our local governments will have new blood. Many school boards have new leaders. There are new faces in boroughs and townships and cities.
Every one of those elected — old and new — has the chance to look at what has happened before, choose what to continue, what lessons to learn and what to discard. And then they can move forward, not beholden to the past but wiser for acknowledging it.