Dear 2015,
I am delighted to hear that you’re moving in as the newest tenant in our Earth building, and will be with us for the next 365 days!
I haven’t met you yet, but since I’ve spent so much time with your older brothers, I feel like I more or less know you. So I am going to write to you like I would write to your brother 2014, but I won’t use a few terms that he loves so much, such as “yolo” and “twerk” – which I really do hope do not belong to your vocabulary. I wanted to write this letter to let you know the situation here, so that once you get here, you’ll be prepared. Of course we will throw a huge party for you. Every single floor of our building will have the best decorations and entertainment just to celebrate your arrival. I must tell you, however, do not be fooled by the welcoming party, things are not always what they seem here.
Your older brother, 2014, was pretty awesome to me and will be hard to top as tenant. As soon as he moved in, we shared so many incredible adventures. I graduated from Uni, started my Masters, and so much more! He was super nice to almost all the other neighbours in the building as well. The Germans got a wonderful summer surprise: a new trophy to put on their sports shelves. They won the Football building coup. It’s a pretty big thing! Latvia joined the Euro group on the “Europe” floor; and Russia hosted the Winter Olympics, which perhaps was not so great for Russia, but Norway, Sweden and other tenants absolutely loved it! Your brother was also very active on other floors though; you should see what he did on the “America” floor of the building… He helped the NASA group to send a robot on another building of which we do not know much about. The red building not so far from ours – Mars.
It was an exciting year. Your brother really brought and helped us achieve so many things! It will be hard to see him leaving. But he is taking some friends along, and I am more than sure that he will be in excellent company. Robin Williams and Joan Rivers will make him laugh so much, and Joe Cocker will make the finest music to entertain the discussions between him and his friends Maya Angelou, Ariel Sharon and so many others.
But not everything he brought was good, and this is why I am writing to you. I won’t write a grocery list (even though it would be great if you could bring some food for the poorer people in our building), but a list of things that we all need in our building. And since you will be the newest tenant, it would be nice if you could bring some things with you when you arrive, or at least fix some problems that your older brother has created over his stay with us.
Your brother let in some new tenants. They like to call their group ISIS (or ISIL). I don’t like them very much; they express their ideas in the wrong way, and spread fear among their neighbours and do unspeakable acts. Talking about unspeakable acts, there are too many of those that happen on a daily basis here. Too many wars and too few people who do something to stop them. People with no home, who go around the building looking for a place. Kids that lose their mothers during childbirth due to poor hygiene conditions. People that die of hunger… Life is not easy on every floor. Some floors are great, they have everything, but some apartments on some floors do not have access to clean water, or food. While your brother was here, many girls around the building did not have an easy life, sadly. On the Africa floor, in the Nigeria wing, too many young girls went missing. Not to mention the unspeakable acts that so many girls (and not just them) from all over the building had to endure: kidnapping, genital mutilation, rapes, murders…
Dear 2015, I do not want to scare you with this letter. I just want to let you know that there is a lot of work to do in the next 365 days, and I really do wish that you can help us all to make our building better. Every year, as soon as one of your older brothers move in, we say: “this time we are going to fix all the problems!”, but somehow, we never manage to do so. Or if we do manage to solve some problems, some new ones come up… I know, you are not a superhero, but once you move in, please do help us. Help us remember that we should all try to do something to make our building better, that all our small actions do matter.
I do have another request, once you move in and you go visiting all parts of the building, could you please remember to bring everyone some hope, patience, good will and a little luck? We could all use some of those.
I can’t wait to meet you!
See you on the 1st of January,
Federica