TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

New Year's Extravagances Send Wrong Message

ADVERTISEMENT

By Dawn Zamanis

Published: January 10, 2007

Brandon, FL - Brandon, FL - Forgive my blatant lack of happy, sappy sentimentality, but the whole New Year's thing seems a little absurd.

Some of you may find it refreshing not having to comprehend yet another hackneyed column chock full of clichés associated with New Year's Day. Others will find it to be a discouraging commentary.

Truth be known, I'm weary of the redundancies that go along with what life is sure to bring this coming year, regardless of anything else that happens -- predictable political scuffles and diatribe in every paper, every media forum.

It is what it is. Can't we, for a moment, give ourselves permission to bury our heads in the sand before having to deal with it all again? The last I heard, momentarily burying our heads in the sand to cope with whatever is irking us is not a crime. It only becomes a moral crime of complacency and dishonor if you keep your head buried in the sand without emerging in time to put forth an earnest effort to help make life better in some way for your family or for someone you know (assuming you have the tools to do so).

Spending millions of dollars on fireworks to celebrate a new year is not my idea of making someone else's life better. It's an insensitive affront to people and children afflicted with pain and suffering, who lack the basic necessities, as well as to those who have witnessed the most devastating of human tragedies in every corner of the world.

I wonder if those millions of dollars would have been better spent helping underprivileged and impoverished children and victims of tragedies worldwide, from the United States to Africa and anywhere in-between.

Isn't it worth it to give up at least some of the extravagance and the exhaustive display of frivolous fireworks -- surely no one would miss a $100,000 worth of bottle rockets blasting over the East River-- to actually feed a village of hungry children? Or are the hordes of people who line the streets all over the world on New Year's Eve observing millions of dollars' worth of what would literally purchase the bare necessities for thousands of children being blasted into the same sky really in need of that kind of pyrotechnical presentation to fill some kind of aching void in their lives?

Is it really a life-changing event to be a spectator of a very expensive fireworks display on New Year's Eve? Or is it just another wasteful show of commercialism and, let's face it, an excuse to drink ourselves into a state of oblivion? Not me, thank you.

Whatever comes this year; those who have traded in their optimism for pessimism, thanks to events like these, will almost certainly view the start of the New Year in a nontraditional, cynical way. The New Year doesn't instantly bring about new hopes and a new outlook on the worn-out, stale, pointless chatter about issues facing the aforementioned; chatter that has failed to amount to anything but wasted time. They are the realists and they have every right to feel the way they do, regardless of who calls them party-poopers and labels them sorry souls.

I guess when you look at it from the perspective of someone who has lived the better part of his or her life in survival mode, New Year's Day is just another day, albeit a day to contemplate the fact that we've all been granted one more year to attempt to endure whatever life throws our way.

Bring it on.

Dawn Zamanis is a Valrico resident and the mother of five sons. She has been a freelance writer for national magazines and news publications and can be contacted through thebrandonnews@mediageneral.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT