The new year has already begun for most of the world, including many people I love. But in the hours left to me in 2020, there is something I need to acknowledge so that I can move into a better, more hopeful new year.

We Americans have come face to face with some hard truths about ourselves in this year. We have seen the grisly injustice in our history and in our present reality laid bare. Yet nothing has struck a chord of despair in me so much as learning just a little on this New Years Eve about the still unmarked graves of hundreds of slaves on the grounds of our first president’s estate, George Washington’s Mt. Vernon. So many lives stolen and forgotten; so many dreams denied!

We should at least know their names. Perhaps we never will, and that weighs on my conscience. I wasn’t there; I didn’t participate in that original sin; I didn’t hold those chains. Still, throughout my life, I have stood on foundations built by those women, men, and even their children. And I have profited from the legacy of that wrong, and others. Further, I have been nurtured on and by land stolen from others.

We should at least know their names.

I hope that in this new year, we can do much more to throw off the weighty chains of a history that holds us captive. What does that mean? Perhaps it begins by listening to each other. As I so often say to the orchestra, listen more than you play. Our number one job is to listen. This night, I have never been more convinced of that truth.

I am sorry to inject this dark note into what is usually a celebratory night. But this seems like a good time to shed some baggage that we all have been carrying for far too long. We can make 2021 a much brighter and better year.