Dan Rather
WHAT A YEAR 2005 WAS. Not, by most measures, a good year. A year ushered in by our dawning comprehension of the toll inflicted by the Indian Ocean tsunami. A year punctuated by disaster - Katrina's battering of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and the Himalayan earthquake that left thousands dead and many more exposed to the elements. A year that ended with fires sweeping through Texas and Oklahoma.
It was a year in which good news, when it came, seemed more often than not to arrive with bad news riding a shotgun. Iraq comes to mind: The slow march of democratic institutions -- free elections, a constitution, more elections -- taking that country several measured steps forward while sectarian violence, terrorism and sabotage took it, simultaneously and chaotically, several steps back.
AS WE LOOK AHEAD
It was a year in which scores more of our men and women in uniform were killed in Afghanistan, and hundreds more were killed in Iraq. In March, we registered the 1,500th U.S. military death in Iraq; in October, the 2,000th. It was a year in which thousands more were injured, many badly.
As we look ahead to 2006, with 2005 in the rearview mirror, one word we are not hearing very much is 'optimism.' But even when it is not said aloud, experience and history tell us that optimism resides still in American hearts. True, optimism can seem at times like a luxury. For the citizens of a democracy, though, just as it is for those with children to raise, optimism is also a necessity.
DARK DAYS
We have passed through our share of dark days this year. But darker days than these, far darker, were endured by those who lived before us in this land. George Washington and his troops knew them in the Valley Forge winter of 1777-78. A nation at war with itself knew them during the long, bloody years of the civil war. Americans and the world knew them in the depths of the great depression, in the teeth of two World Wars.
One need not prettify bad news to note that we as a nation have passed through the trials of many wars and economic depressions, and have survived and thrived to a degree unknown in the history of humanity. Yes, we face a new year beset with tremendous challenges, at home and abroad, local and global. And yes, optimism is our best and only option for facing the year and the tests it is sure to contain.
True optimism does not mean that we either need to or should make ourselves blissfully unaware of unpleasant realities. And true optimism is not the kind sold by political consultants. True optimism is not a partisan ploy, and is the province of neither Democrats nor Republicans. True optimism means accepting the worst, envisioning the best, and then working toward it.
OPTIMISM
True optimism is something that resides deep in the American spirit, a trait that made it first conceivable and then possible for an isolated group of colonists to embark on a grand experiment in self-governance. As the experiment unfolds still, optimism and hope, rather than pessimism and fear, remain its strongest engines and greatest allies.
Almost 220 years ago, Thomas Jefferson, who articulated so much of what America is, may have said it best when he wrote in a letter that, "It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate, to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance."
So here's looking forward to the new year; here's to rolling up our collective sleeves and working to make our greatest hopes for the future a reality. Here's to optimism for 2006, in word and deed.
Dan Rather is a former U.S. television broadcaster.
