Peter Cunningham

Been a great year in so many ways. A magical grand-daughter is transforming before my eyes, an extended visit to the old sod (Western Ireland), music, music, music from me and others, some excellent visits with excellent friends, a historic tomato crop from the garden that produced until mid-December, and a good year of work with good people. It wasn’t all a bed of roses, of course, but it never is.

The big read of the year was Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” 1200 glowing pages of love, death, drama, destruction, and vodka. Been wanting to read it since high school but never made the time. It took me a full month to read the whole story and about four months to complete the second epilogue–a dense 40-page treatise on the alternating forces of freedom and necessity and how historians tend to dwell on known figures like Napoleon but miss the deeper truths about people and the billions of independent decisions they make that actually shape world events. His point seems to be that major events like wars are not simply driven by messianic lunatics seeking power and glory but are actually caused by the ones doing the fighting and the many, many others enabling it to happen. In a sense, the ones we think of as leaders are really the followers. If you’re looking for a brain challenge, you might give the second epilogue a shot.

For me, it speaks to our times. We just elected a Napoleonic figure as President. Tolstoy’s point, is that we, you, me and millions of Americans, did this. Obvious as this sounds, he is suggesting that we are the main actors in this drama and that our voices and actions matter more than his. What that means for the year ahead is up to each of us. We can choose to stay silent or not, choose to collaborate, celebrate, surrender or resist. Far from powerless, we are, in fact, the ones who are in charge. Ultimately, it’s a hopeful message.

Happy New Year.