Years ago I was privileged to spend some time at the Pilchuck School of Glass, an internationally renowned community of artists in hot glass outside of Seattle Washington.  Glass blowing is not an artform for the fainthearted.  One must stand for hours, drawing molten glass out of a furnace as hot as a volcano.  The glass is incrementally manipulated into a shape that has been conceived before hand.  The process takes time, the glass being reheated often by insertion into a white hot glory hole.  When the work has reached the artists satisfaction, the object is placed in an annealing oven for the slow step-down process of cooling.

One cannot know if success has been achieved until the annealing oven lid is raised and the glass object is lifted up into daylight for inspection.  With luck, stress cracks will be absent— and the admiration of lights refraction through the now solidified glass begins.  The appreciation lasts a lifetime, as long as the object created at physical and intellectual cost to the artist, lasts.

We are approaching the end of 2019.  With the year 2020 humanity will have come a significant way into the twenty-first century.  The world is

interconnected as never before in history.  The tools of mankind have made unprecedented communication possible.  These tools which are in use by millions on a regular basis, make possible the giving and taking of offense on a scale never known before.  With a twitter account one can disseminate lies and paranoia to millions.  Without agreed upon standards of propriety, who is to say, who will judge the dividing line between right and wrong?  There is no need to mention that some areas of the world are awash with weapons, scoured by famine, disease, and population dislocation consequent to simmering war, without any seeming end.  Strong man rule-by-decree seems to gain in popularity.

What are the prospects for peace in 2020?

I do not know.  I believe that making peace is similar to glass blowing.  One works very hard, for extended periods, in order to achieve progress, to improve, to nurse recalcitrant elements into a recognizable form that we’d agree to call “peace.”

Peace might not mean getting everyone else to do what you want them to do.

Instead, it might involve understanding that people don’t always want what we want and don’t often believe what we believe. Everyone has their own narrative and is struggling with their own fears.

We can begin there.

— Seth Godin

You will be well rewarded by visiting Seth’s web blog. CLICK HERE

To conclude I offer for your enjoyment and contemplation a well-loved tune by the Rolling Stones.  The point is both good news and bad:  you can’t always get what you want, and yet, if you try……  I like the dirge-like, dark keyboard notes and choir that introduce the tune, which develops into a rollicking Blues chorus.

And peace to you!