As another year closes

By John Rapley

As I write this, well-sated by the season's joyous festivities, the United States is bickering its way towards the fiscal cliff, Jamaica is still negotiating an IMF agreement, and Italy - God bless Italy - has revived its political rancour and is threatening to re-energise the European crisis in fresh elections. To the south, India's once-roaring economy has been slowing all through 2012. Meanwhile a darkening cloud hangs over China, as its relations with its immediate neighbours grow tense, while its own economic engine shows signs of losing steam.

So with few really bright spots in the world economy at the moment, and a spreading politics of rage, 2013 is shaping up to be another tough year.

Still, I have other things on my mind as this year winds to a close. Two weeks before Christmas, I received an e-mail from an old friend of mine from my Oxford days. A brilliant, witty, engaging scholar, he rose fast through the ranks at Oxford. Then, a prestigious university in his native Australia asked him to return and take its reins. He moved his young family and settled into the life of a top-drawer administrator.

Fateful email

We kept occasional contact, just enough not to drift out of one another's orbit. Then came the fateful email. In a circular to his friends around the world, he announced that his wife was undergoing emergency surgery for cancer. A man of deep faith, he requested prayers from everyone for the woman he loved.

Four days before Christmas, he sent an update, saying she had taken a turn for the worse, but retained her infectiously positive spirit.

Three days before Christmas, the final update, she had left us. Pray we make it through Christmas, were my friend's final words.

Many of us can all look back on a year of losses. I was left to reflect on the terrible sorrow of my friend. But strangely, I was also taken with a sense of gratitude - above all, gratitude that I had had the privilege of knowing such an extraordinary woman as his wife. My life, like those of countless others, was better for having known her.

Just as it had been enriched by the life of a niece of mine, her life suddenly and tragically snuffed out in a car accident earlier this year. When it happened, I couldn't help but feel that no matter when and how her life had ended, it was ever going to be sudden. So abundant had been her joy and energy that my niece's candle could never have simply burned out.

Few favours

Things will indeed be rough in 2013. Jamaica will be getting few favours from the global economy, and probably fewer yet from the IMF. The cost of living may rise faster than wages. Some people may lose jobs, while others look in vain. With little fat left, the country will have to pray its way through another hurricane season.

But I am always reminded in this season that as long as you have life, and health, you have all you need. Start with that base, and you can make everything else follow in time. That's no excuse for complacency, and it's certainly a lousy justification for any politician trying to rationalise his or her failures. But my friend, on the last day he spent with his wife before bidding her goodbye, gave thanks for the gift of her life.

I always emerged wiser from all my conversations with my friend. I had once more. To all of you, I wish a good start to the New Year. Little, if anything, will be easy in 2013. But with the life and health we have, all else is nonetheless possible.

John Rapley is a foreign affairs analyst. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and rapley.john@gmail.com