Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1066826
25 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 30 DECEMBER 2018 OPINION the Eurozone; or that employ- ment is almost 100%, etc. Indeed, looked at from those two contrasting perspectives, it is only natural that 2018 would eventually develop some kind of neurotic, multiple per- sonality disorder. It has been branded an 'annus horribilis' – only marginally less 'horribilis' than its predecessor (and boy, was 2017 a stinker) – by all those who believe we're living in some kind of totalitarian, dystopian nightmare… yet also hailed as a 'record year' for prosperity and civil liberties by all those who concurrently believe we are currently going through 'L-Aqwa Zmien': a slogan which implies not just the 'best of times we have seen yet'… but also the 'best time possible': i.e., 'better that it can ever be again'… Small wonder that 2018 would eventually lose its mar- bles enough to go on a global, homicidal killing spree like that. It messes with your mind, to be simultaneously described in such completely antitheti- cal, mutually incompatible terms. Clearly, 2018 can't have been either as 'horribilis' or 'mirabilis' as it is made out to have been. So maybe… just maybe… the problem re- ally lies within the hopelessly tribal, polarized mindset that tends to view reality only from those two, entirely warped perspectives. (If so, it is doubly unfair to blame 2018 for some- thing that actually precedes it by decades, if not centuries…) And therefore, esteemed members of the jury: like so many other vulnerable misfits and outcasts, my client – I mean, Year of Our Lord, 2018 - is nothing more or less than the victim of what a sociologist might term as 'socio-cultural scapegoating'. Far from a perpetrator of all the ghastly crimes with which it now stands accused – two days be- fore its death, please note - it is in reality a mere innocent by- stander, onto whom the truly guilty parties have projected all their own inner biases and malevolence. Contrary to claims made by the prosecution, it was not 2018 who 'brought with it an intensification of political hatred' in this country. That is something only political haters can do; and if they chose to do more of it this year than last… well, whose fault is that? The people who did the choosing, or the year in which they made the choice? Conversely, we shall have to also agree that 2018 may be unfairly credited with 'success- es' in which it played no part; and which, in any case, are always going to appear more 'successful' in the eyes of some than others. Let us therefore do this much-maligned year the jus- tice of at least recognizing all the exceptional circumstances that led it to its current state: i.e., that it happened to come at a time when we were all at each other's throats anyway; and that, if things seemed to have got worse in the course of its 365 days… well, that is our fault, not 2018's. Lastly, esteemed jurors, spare a thought also for the family of a year that is, when all is said and done, now dying… especially the young ones. Like Baby 2019, for instance, who will be born at precisely midnight tomorrow. We wouldn't want her to start out in life burdened by all the guilt so unfairly heaped on her fa- ther, now would we? It would hardly be a 'Happy New Year' if it got off on such an ominous note, now would it? No, as any sociologist would also tell you: little babies are only ever going to be as 'happy' or otherwise as the family atmosphere they are born into. It's true of humans; and it is obviously true of years, too (if nothing else, because in 365 days' time we will also be blaming 2019 for all our own, entirely human shortcom- ings, as we are now doing with 2018). So when I end this article with the traditional, inevitable 'Happy New Year'… what it actually means is: 'make an effort to be happier this year'. Not 'sit back and hope that 2019 will arbitrarily, and for no apparent reason, make things happier for you…without you ever lifting a finger to make things happier for 2019'. Damn, now I've gone and screwed up my traditional 'end-of-year' article ending. What a great start to the New Year… 2019 will be pivotal in bringing in the necessary REFORMS in key areas. We pledge to deliver.