Sweeping Essay Collection Muses on the Tumultuous Times of 2022

Musings 2022 by Denis O'Neill

Some musings to consider:

“Humanity is in crisis.”

“The rise and supremacy of cell phone culture has helped diminish the importance of content.”

“A shortage of fabric up top … a shirtless young male actor. The Oscars looked like a parade of people who had lost bets.”

“Once everyone had equal access to Covid vaccinations, Republicans died at a much higher rate than Democrats in the same zip code.”

And that’s just the start.

Groundbreaking television shows some 50 years ago like That Was the Week That Was have given way to modern-day versions of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver and The Daily Show. So now, author, screenwriter and executive producer Denis O’Neill has zeroed in on 365 days in particular — the year 2022 — in his new anthology of essays entitled Musings 2022.

Far-Ranging and Well-Interpreted Topics

O’Neill’s chronological account of the year includes rants and riffs about politics, poetry, societal matters, his Irish heritage, and subjects of the heart.

And what is his motive? Maybe it isn’t all that complicated. “The older you get,” he says, “the more your life becomes a vehicle for wistful contemplation. A natural condition,” especially when paired with a sense of humor.

For the year 2022, one certainly needed just that. If one is to recall, it most certainly was as the author notes, “a year of living dangerously,” between the pandemic, political corruption, Putin invading Ukraine, the death of a monarch and a whole lot more.

His topics, more than 70 all told, are far-ranging and well-interpreted. It’s hard not to have so many of them focus on the political climate, both worldwide and domestically, and the well-documented events that dominated front pages everywhere.

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

It’s interesting, though, that O’Neill likens our current-day domestic plight to the days of Lincoln and the Civil War. In effect, we were “two countries and two cultures back then.” And centuries apart, “we are even more so now.”

The author hits upon banned books and warns that before the work of a great like Charles Dickens falls into the category, consider that his words seem “hauntingly expressive” of the way the world was in 2022. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness … it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair” — you get the idea.

In reminiscing about a college class reunion, O’Neill writes, “I like the mystery of not knowing exactly where the time goes. I also like the power of connective tissue through family, friends, classmates and loved ones to make the journey bearable in hard times and memorable when joy reigns.”

The beauty of stopping the clock and offering opinions about the events and trends of a given time period is that armchair quarterbacks in 2024 have the ability to see how well O’Neill’s posturings and predictions played out.

An Insightful, Worthwhile Read

So how did he do? Is it even fair to keep score at all, or perhaps simply ponder his points and take value in his well-thought-out observations?

“I suspect that life’s central struggle, personally and universally, is to find a manageable blend of good and bad, hope and despair, and come to terms with the iron-clad imperfection of the journey. It’s a quest that’s never ending … It’s why music has minor and major chords.”

“Wisdom doesn’t come with an expiration date,” O’Neill says. So if readers can gather insights and take pleasure from the musings of a year gone by, then they will find Musings 2022 a most worthwhile endeavor.