It’s hard to believe that 2019 is just about in our rear view window. Where does the time go?  So much has happened internationally, nationally, and locally. Wildfires, talks of impeachment, mass shootings, college admission scandals, measles outbreaks, the Kurds, low unemployment numbers, the homeless crisis, the Dodgers coming oh-so-close to a World Series again, and much more.

On a personal level, many of us have experienced job changes or promotions, graduations, new births, weddings, vacations and new experiences over the past year. Some of us, while enjoying a wonderful time filled with hopes and dreams of future activities, have had to reset and reevaluate those hopes and dreams due to a loss of a loved one.

In his play  «The Foresters,» a work based on the Robin Hood legend, the esteemed British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson penned a conversation between Robin and Little John, where Robin proclaimed, «Upon a birthday: if this life of ours be a good glad thing, why should we make us merry because a year of it is gone? But hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come whispering ‘It will be happier.»

Yes, 2019 is one more year in the books for us. One more year we don’t have. Yet, here we are facing another trip around the sun. Perhaps this trip will be one that we won’t be taking with someone we care deeply about.  If we are taking that journey into 2020 without someone we expected to be with us, we can still take our hopes and dreams with us, along with our memories, into a new adventure. The new years is whispering, «It will be happier.»

Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2020!