Yes, it's over! Christmas come and gone just so. Another year winds down to the final four days, and a brand new twelve-month period stares us in the face, again! So, it's time once more to start planning again, to make the same old New Year's resolutions again, so we can break them by the middle of January again. It's time again to wonder how come the utility bills swell up so big, and why the credit card debts look so frightening. It's time for all kinds of post-seasonal depressions to begin creeping in, as 'bruck-pocket' season starts to set in. Again!

Yes friends, we are now ushering in 2007, so it's time for the nation's leaders to regurgitate the same tired messages about the challenges and opportunities, and the need to recommit to the task of nation building and so on and so forth again. Both local government and general elections are constitutionally due in 2007, so it may soon be time again for the hype and tripe of the charade called campaigning, with the attendant public parties, expensive advertising and various forms of political posturing. It might soon be time for the parade of promises, the slinging of mud and the shedding of blood. Again!

But life is never all negative. No sah, this is Jamaica after all, so everything is everything! Yes, everything is great and our economic prospects are promising - if you listen to Dr. Omar Davies. But then, everything is awfully hopeless - if you listen to Mutty Perkins. The current Government has done absolutely nothing for Jamaica and has no redeeming positive quality - if you read Delroy Chuck. But this is the best government we could ever have to positively lead this great nation to progress and prosperity - if you read Rev. Garnet Roper. And of course, everything is all of the above and everything in between - if you read all the other columnists in the daily papers.

So I intend to ignore all those people and listen to my granddaughter. She is my hero and role model for 2007 and beyond. Why? Her presence infuses me with a great sense of hope and pride and love and promise. She is totally in love with the world and smiles readily with everyone. When I throw her up in the air she screams with utter delight and seems completely void of fear, maybe because she is confident that I will catch her and not allow her to be hurt. She fully expects everyone around her to keep her safe from harm. She takes anything you put to her mouth because such is the extent of her faith and trust in the world; and that kind of faith and trust can do something powerful to people. If nothing else, it helps to keep me focused on a very important responsibility: My responsibility to ensure that I never betray that sacred faith and trust that is placed in me. To betray the faith and trust of a child is to damage the hope and joy of the future.

Thanks to my little hero, I am looking toward the New Year with hope and expectation. Hope springs eternal; and daylight will smile on my dreams like dark night fades to gold and green. Faith is the substance of things hoped for; evidence of things not seen.

So laugh loud, love more, live by faith, and have a blessed New Year - again!

box-mi-back@hotmail.com.