^ what the State House will look like tonight, on a night balmy for this time of year

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Might 2019 be a year of progress and peace, of prosperity and fairness, of tolerance and citizens of the world uniting ? One has to wonder if.

Might these hopes that we have just asked not be too much ? Almost everyone in the world wants to live a life of accomplishment, safety, and love. All of these should befall all of us. Why can’t this take place now ?

As we see it, the biggest obstacle to the happiness of almost all of us is the selfishness of a few. That and their possession of powers which they are willing to abuse for the sake of imposing what THEY want on all the rest of us.

Some of those who have these powers were given them freely in elections or otherwise. Others simply took powers when and as they could. Whichever is the case, the powers possessed by those who have them threaten us all. It’s time that we the vast majority confront abuses of power and defeat their purposes.

I do not speak only of our own situation here in the United States. Though the person who now occupies Article 2 of the Constitution’s executive office violates his oath of office every day, as well as the duties imposed on his office by the Constitution, we the people retain full power to end his misrule. One of our hopes for 2019 is that the citizens of this nation will do just that : having taken strong possession of the Congress, the new majority must refuse 45’s abuse and block his overreach.

He has the Federal government partly shut down, to no good purpose — to an expensive and fraudulent scam — and this must end as soon as the new Congress  takes over. He continues to violate the nation’s laws, to stoke prejudices and hates, and in general to disrespect the nation’s institutions and citizens. The new Congress must put an end to his holding an office he has proven himself entirely unworthy of.

Yet our hopes for 2019 scope larger than the upcoming Congress. What we see, and want, and hope for, is that everywhere in the world where there is abuse of power those who do the abuse will be ousted from their misdeeds and replaced by the rule of law, of respect for all,  of tolerance and liberty so that people can go about their lives freely — free to invent stuff and even to reinvent themselves.

Every single life must be free to live. For us, the ‘worldwide” means every single person, but singly; every life, but lived one life at a time.

We probably cannot “fix society,” but we can each of us fix ourselves: one life at a time. That’s all it takes. Each person fixing himself or herself. Perhaps each of us can begin to build our lives on the precept that Rabbi Hillel the Elder (who lived and taught in the generation immediately preceding that of Jesus, who preached much of what Hillel taught) reputedly told a student who came to him 2,030 years ago : ‘whatever is hurtful to you, do not do to your fellow man. This is the whole law, the rest is commentary. Now go forth and study.”

May you who read us and follow Here and Sphere take to heart Hillel’s dictum and thus make the world that much a better place.

—- The Editors / Here and Sphere