For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning."

New Year! It's time to change gears and drive on

BY RON DZWONKOWSKI • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • January 1, 2009

Well, 2008 turned out to be even tougher than we feared. But, hey, we made it through. So now comes 2009, with all the gloomy predictions. It's understandable if your "Happy New Year" wish ends with more of a ? than a ! this time around.

Is there a light at the end of this tunnel? Don't know, because we can't see the end yet, or so the economists tell us. And now the entire nation has slipped into the downhill tube that Michigan entered about seven years ago. So even if you could sell your house and get out of Michigan, there's really no economic hot spot where you can go.

Face it folks. Our only option is to make this place what we know it can be, what it should be.

Somehow, all this adversity has to become opportunity. And that is entirely possible. Why? Because more and more people in Michigan have stopped looking in the rearview mirror and started figuring out the road ahead. It has taken awhile -- and a lot of pain -- but we understand now that what was will not be again, and our focus is finally shifting to what's next.

And we will get there. Not exactly on a roll, but just because there is no place to go but forward.

We have an advantage: We're desperate. And nothing drives tough decisions like desperation.

History and literature are filled with stories of people who stood on the brink of disaster and found themselves doing things they never thought they would have to do, could do, or would ever want to do. They stopped waiting for help, stopped hoping for things to go back to the way they were and changed the reality on the ground. They put aside old enmities and pulled together -- not by choice but because they had no other choice.

It is no exaggeration to say that Michigan is in just such a situation as this new year begins. The economic forces that shaped this state are going through tectonic changes that will heave and cleave the landscape for years to come. The giant businesses that for years took care of people around here are just not going to be able to do what they used to do and survive. They went through hell in '08 just to make it to '09, and are in no position to stand pat.

Even this newspaper, the oldest continuously operated business in Detroit, is making radical changes in its operations this year to survive in a new form instead of trying, and inevitably failing, to preserve the old.

From surviving to thriving

We all know people who have survived some kind of personal disaster -- an arrest, illness, divorce, job loss, what have you -- and who can look back on it and say, "At the time, I thought my life was over, but if it hadn't happened, I never would have changed. Yes, it was terrible, it hurt, but today I am better for it."

That can be Michigan. Maybe not in 2009, but 2010 is not out of the question if we lay the groundwork this year.

How?

By applying our vaunted work ethic to improving and expanding education at the child and adult levels so we have a population smart enough for the jobs of tomorrow.

By leveraging our health care institutions and world-class university system to make Michigan a center for treatment, cures, research and progress on the amazing frontiers of science and medicine.

By fostering the small businesses that are actually creating jobs and attracting the young, college-educated people that Michigan desperately needs to retain.

By using our natural resources and brainpower to truly become a center for the one thing, guaranteed, the world will need in the 21st Century -- energy from sources other than oil.

And by us, the people, demanding loudly that state and regional leaders set aside personal, partisan and special interest agendas to focus on just two things: doing more with less, and doing what's best for Michigan.

No, we cannot yet see the light at the end of this tunnel. Nor can we back up. And 2009 should be the year we accelerate forward. It's going to hurt. It's hard to get by while "in transition." But it's not like we have a lot of choices. And when next we wish a "Happy New Year" more of us will be able to add a ! -- and say, "It hurt, but today, I am better for it."

RON DZWONKOWSKI is editor of the Free Press editorial page. Contact him at dzwonk@freepress.com or 313-222-6635.