Offerings to the New Year pyre, 2016
Next week, six months, a year or five years from now, will it matter? When I took my first journalism job and had difficulty deciding what to write about or lead with, my mother asked me that question. Even bedridden with bone cancer, she had a way of keeping her priorities straight, of separating the “littles” from the “biggies.” In retrospect, it probably also was her way of encouraging my continued presence in the world outside of her bedroom, effectively making sure her youngest child didn’t become her full-time caregiver. Throughout my life I’ve been handed various words of wisdom with a similar sentiment. “Forget everything that means nothing,” one of my first editors advised. My brother told me if I couldn’t change it, I’d best let it go. In…