There must be someone who has made this year special for you. It does not have to be anything spectacular – maybe a smile at the right moment, a word of sympathy when you needed it most, a small gift, a kiss, a touch, a little attention or some transferred positive energy… Now is the time to remember them, to give them to those people fight back with the same measure!
It is good to say this at the beginning, because the opposite was abundantly taken care of by the general socio-political events which in 2021 only continued the anxiety, depression and challenges of daily survival that were so abundantly “served” to us in the previous, 2020 .

In socio-political terms, Macedonia has not been more disoriented since the last one, 2021. There have been other difficult, even very difficult economic or security years, for which our feelings at the time have faded, but the “net” of uncertainty and mass fear of the prolonged health and psychological threat of the pandemic that has lasted too long has never been thrown over all those complications. so that it could be ignored this year as well.

We have been accustomed to part of the other for years: political complications of all kinds and contents, the ruling majority that continued to hang in the balance, economic failures that overshadowed economic successes, a huge amount of abominations, insults and group and personal disqualifications that are like leprosy spread more successfully than the covid on social platforms and in the “appropriate” portals, a major defeat of some of the government in the local elections turned into a defeat of the opposition in the intention to overthrow the government from the national throne, followed by drama or melodrama – depending on which side that question is in your “heart” – with Zaev’s unexpected withdrawal from politics… The dose of justice and corruption scandals were in a “dead race” with the “ordinary” scandals of public rooms, scouts and hospital corridors… Even the two largest individual human tragedies in modern Macedonian history – the fire in the Tetovo hospital and the car accident in Bulgaria – that happened to us in the same year, to kill us They are collectively stunned and rightly upset, crying… And all that under the “umbrella” of the Euro-integration experience that, for some reason, Bulgaria and the European Union have prepared for us, and it will last for the next decade!
All year long, cautiously, we walk on a tightly stretched rope over the deep abyss below us and the high sky above us, with our mobile phones, instead of with a longer baton for life balancing in our hands. Our heads are made of large chips, there is no need for a new dose of vaccines.

Well, still…

The socio-philosophical nature of the phenomenon of hope is a widely disputed and praised concept. While some argue that we can not hope for something that is difficult to achieve, others argue that it is the belief in the feasibility of the impossible that defines hope as a key factor in success and when it seems impossible. Which approach will prevail depends on the personal and social interpretation of the present and the future, especially the assessment of how much external factors, such as pure happiness, the arrangement of the stars, “fate” / God or other “higher powers” will be affected, or not, to our wishes come true.

In this sense, people often forget that, if not done well, the loneliness of hope is a bad and even demotivating strategy for success. This also applies to the belief that only some others should work to make our hopes come true. That line has been drawn since the interpretations of Christian eschatologies of the destiny of the world and man and Marxist utopias of the attainment of needs versus possibilities. Well, with such “asymmetric” efforts, my grandmother can too! And let Kant’s grandmother not advance the thesis that general historical success requires collective hope, but only as a driving force for individual efforts to achieve personal happiness. If a social consensus is reached on this, other “red lines” become much less important.

That is why I think that wishing “Happy New Year 2022!” Is not a meaningless wish, because the spirit of this nation needs hope that next year will be better! (Cynics would say that worse than this can not… A, can, can.)

And do not forget those who made 2021 special, even for a moment. You are surrounded by such people, you just have to want to see them.

Happy New Year 2022!