A New Year and New Challenges

With the beginning of a new year and looking back at the challenges that were taken up during 2011, I am both grateful and amazed. Grateful for the opportunity to work and study and amazed that despite financial difficulties and some health problems, 2011 has been a successful year.

Usually my position economically is starkly contrasted with the 40% of South Africans who have no formal work opportunities and for who everyday is a matter of getting food on the table. But 2011 certainly brought the rest of the world and especially Europe and North America into the limelight with financial woes and crises of their own. The impact of higher joblessness on these continents is already being seen with reports of higher numbers of homeless making the news. I would imagine that this crisis might see an increased need for social services at these troubled times and have lasting impact on families and individuals around the world.

Going into 2012, my wish is for those in the helping profession to continue to practise the values that form the basis of this work and to keep the faith in a world that at times may seem too much to bear with the pain and the suffering encountered everyday.

To end is a poem on the change of year:

"How beautiful the turning of the year!
A moment artificial yet profound:
Point upon an arbitrary chart
Passing like a breath upon the heart,
Yearning with anticipation wound,
New hope new harbored in old-fashioned cheer.
Even when the boundary line is clear,
We recognize the oneness of the ground.
Years, like circles, do not end or start
Except we lay across their truth our art,
Adjusting dates as they go round and round
Revolving to a tune long sung and dear." 

Turlough O'Carolan