As our Explainer this week, makes clear, humans have a fondness for arbitrary dates. They help regulate our lives, telling us when the week ends and the month begins, which day to remember our marriage and which day to celebrate our birth.
They also, curiously, govern our hopes and fears. The end of the summer often brings about a fear that the year is passing and our goals are not, perhaps, been accomplished swiftly enough. A milestone birthday – 30, 40 or 50 – can make us ponder the direction of our lives. And, of course, the new year makes us look forward and hope for better times.
Certainly, 2016 has brought challenges. Internationally, the election of Donald Trump in the United States and the vote for Brexit in the United Kingdom have both created uncertainty that will affect many expats in the UAE. Closer to home, the Middle East has seen its share of difficulties, and there have been some seminal moments – the fall of Aleppo to the Syrian regime, the beginning of the assault of Mosul by Iraq’s army – that will govern how 2017 looks.
And that is why it can be hard to be optimistic. Because the end of 2016 is just an arbitrary date in the long process of politics. The events that have been put into motion in 2016, or that were already in motion, are playing out now – they will neither end on December 31 nor begin on January 1. The Syrian civil war has raged for nearly seven years; it will not be ended in a day or a month or perhaps even a year. The fight against ISIL will not end in Mosul or Raqqa, but will take much longer. The effects of a Trump presidency or the Brexit vote will take months or years to become obvious.
The things that fill us with uncertainty or anxiety – like the things that fill us with hope and happiness – are not tied to a particular date. And perhaps there is something optimistic in that. Because for all the difficulties that we are facing at the moment, they will eventually be resolved – not on January 1, but in time.
Similarly, all of the things that we are hopeful about – and everyone will have a different list – will not end on an arbitrary date. What we are hopeful about, what we want to celebrate or change in 2017, is already with us and will stay with us beyond 2017. Our hopes and fears aren’t tied to one particular date.