Muraho!
Saying hello and saying goodbye are part of the naturally occurring nuances in life. Some are more memorable than others. When I think of these customary greetings, I think of how a guest leaves your house: you follow them to the door, say goodbye, wave and then the door is shut. This is not profound, yet when I think of a guest coming into your home, you have to open the door before you can say hello. When I look out at 2024 from my proverbial cliff, I look at all that it has to offer and realize that I have a choice. I can keep the door shut, retreat into the sorrows of the previous year, become pond-water stagnant and never utter a greeting. Or I can choose to open the door, spread my arms wide and say Muraho! embracing all that is before me, believing that I will be stronger through it all. Here is the story: Muraho, is how they say hello in Kinyarwanda, the language of Rwanda, Africa. Muraho is what I will be saying more frequently when my family packs up our entire house and mov