By ZEKE MILLER AP White House Correspondent WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump will host Jordan's King Abdullah II at the White...

Global News Through a Greek Lens
Global News Through a Greek Lens
On the last day of the year, it is customary to note the series of events, to evaluate the international political and economic climate, to measure our strengths and our weaknesses, as we tumble into the new year, loaded with burdens but always hoping for something better. Aside from whatever occurred – great or small, good or bad, a one-off or the consequence of war or of the climate crisis – there is another dimension which we should record, which concerns how we feel, how we chart our course in this continual flow. The river is everchanging, but it remains a river. And we remain ourselves, even as time changes us. So, what changed in us over the past year? Were our desires met? Were our fears confirmed? Everyone has a different answer. We live in the same world, but the good and bad are not synchronized, they touch us differently, with different intensity, we taste joy and bitterness at different moments.
That is why perhaps the most substantial question concerns what we do not want to lose, which still exists in our country, which is part of our common identity, which we would like to see reinforced at the end of the new year. Of course, we all have different criteria as to how we will reply. But the one thing we have in common, which still unites us to a great extent, is simplicity – or, to be more precise, the memory of simplicity. “If you break Greece into parts, in the end you will find that all that’s left is an olive tree, a vineyard, a ship. Which means, with the same elements you could put it together again,” Odysseus Elytis noted. Part of this simplicity is our communality, the fact that, to a lesser or greater extent, we live in the same world, with the same hopes for our children, the same fears, the same songs, the same awe at the burden of the past, the same tragic sense that all that is good can be lost in a moment (which the Tempe train tragedy underscored for today’s generations).
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