It's the last day of a decade, and so I find myself somewhat introspective.  Thinking about what has mattered most and least to me in these last ten years.

Oddly enough, when I tried this exercise, I found it was very hard to remember what has mattered least to me.  There's a lesson to be learned there, I'm sure.  But it doesn't matter much to me.

At any rate, I heard a news report this morning saying a Poll by a reasonably believable polling group had found that 2 out of 3 Americans think that this last decade has more or less stunk (I'm paraphrasing for dramatic purposes).  They had a number of reasons, and of course there are the top two that everyone knows about:

Yes, I know that it was released in 1999, but I believe the malaise that it caused leaked over well into 2005 and 2006.

And the other cause of the public demonization of this decade was, of course:

I don't think that there has ever before been a decade where two such beloved franchises have been struck such crushing blows by "follow up" movies.

Actually, I would have let Indy 4 get by with a "pass" except for the scene where he hides in a refrigerator to escape a nuke.  I get it: the fridge is lead-lined, so no problem with radiation.  But then add on to that the fact that he's at ground zero, the nuke goes off, the fridge (with 92-year old Harrison Ford inside*) goes flying through the air for several miles, so fast it PASSES A CAR THAT IS CONSUMED BY THE EXPLOSION, and then Indy basically rolls out of it and says "Ow" with no other ill-effects.  And this is RIDICULOUS, because as we all know, refrigerators from that era couldn't be opened from the inside, so he would have suffocated.  How could the producers and writers have missed this logic gap???

And so what do we have?  What do we have? We have twin bases of hope in the end of the 20th century - the fact that the Force is out there and the Ark of the Covenant is in good hands - utterly decimated in the first years of the 21st century.

No wonder people think the decade has stunk.

Plus there were some people who died of various causes for some reasons that I could probably remember if I cared to but I don't because I'm still so friggin' upset at the revelation that the mystical, magical "Force" is really caused by some kind of interstellar microbe.  It's not an archetypical metaphor for religion, it's closer to space herpes: "Hey, baby, check this out."  "Wow, your lightsaber is really... bright..."  "Yeah.  It's the force.  That's what it does, baby."  Or how about "May the Force be with you," now it's like saying "I hope you catch cold."

Sucky.

And so the United States swirls downward into a fog of depression.  The only way out, logically is to either eat a bunch of brownies or go buy a bunch of houses and high-end electronics that we can't afford. And who really likes brownies that much, right?

So in a nutshell, it's all Lucas's fault.  I'm not saying he's EVIL, but perhaps he is a little bit evil (see the difference: all uppercase is like Hitler; all lowercase is just Manson or something small potatoes like that).

On the upside, this year I personally did see some good:

I knocked a guy's tooth out in a fight (it was a friendly one, and the dude didn't even know it until after someone gave it to him... which means I won't be fighting him again, because people who don't even notice the loss of a tooth due to a swift uppercut scare me, but still it was a cool macho moment).

I managed to remain out of the hospital for heart attacks (I'm 35 and a lawyer... this is a miracle).

Neither of my children impregnated anyone or became impregnated out of wedlock (yes, they're only 3 and 5, but kids grow up so fast these days).

And my wife is as beautiful as ever (which could be interpreted as a bad thing, since that tends to highlight my rapidly declining facial state when we stand together).

So on the whole, I'd have to say I personally have come out ahead.  I'm still inhaling following every single exhalation (that's the secret to living forever - now you know).  I have my health.  It's not good health, but it's mine (until universal healthcare takes it away from me).  I have a wonderful family and a wonderful extended family.  I have over 600 friends on Facebook, and am fairly certain I've actually met over 20% of them.  I wrote a book that my wife loved and that has had over 125,000 hits on its website in the four or so months since its launch.  I've written this column on a (semi) regular basis, and helped a few people to laugh, a few people to think.

Yes, Lucas did his best to destroy our souls.  Yes, we face challenges (albeit smaller ones) in our domestic situations and in the war on terror.  Yes, all of this happened in the last decade.

But in the last decade we also re-discovered Robert Downey, Jr.  The Dark Knight made almost as much money as it deserved.  People kept praying and working for peace in lots of parts of the world, though some had different opinions of how best to achieve that peace.  Most of us - the great majority, I believe - managed to be good people, good citizens, good neighbors, good friends.

We, as a race, are still alive.  A triumph in itself when you consider our prediliction for self-destruction and the ability we now have to achieve it on a complete scale.

I breathe in.

I breathe out.

I breathe in again.

May we all do better this New Year than we did last.  And may we view that exhortation not as a way of saying "last year was terrible" (after all, none of the Star Wars Prequels or the Crystal Skull came out this year), but rather as an opportunity to look back at our blessings (there will be no more Star Wars prequels), to review our failings (some of us continue to watch the Clone Wars series), and to do better next year.  To feel better.  To BE better.

Triumph lies not in being the best.  It lies merely in being a little bit better today than you were yesterday.  And so, no matter what happens externally, triumph is always within our grasp.

Happy New Decade everyone.

*I only say 92-year old because he looks better at his age than I do at mine, which is so unfair it borders on one of those ancient Greek God-style curses.  On me, not him.  Jerk.