It’s New Year’s Day. Here’s why the past is making me hopeful for the future.

They have coexisted uneasily in the same country for centuries. They don’t often mix, but you can find their respective communities in close proximity to each other.

They identify as different ethnicities with all that entails. Each group has its own dialect, religious tradition, and cultural heritage. These differences produce different visions of the country as a whole.

Each group views the other with a measure of fear and suspicion. There is always an underlying tension between them. Both groups feel that they have been, and continue to be, unjustly victimized by the other. Both see the other as an ongoing threat to their own lives and wellbeing, and possibly the very existence of the country as a whole.

Sometimes the tension bubbles up and breaks through the surface. Public demonstrations and counterdemonstrations erupt into violence and mayhem. Extreme partisans take up arms, resorting to vigilantism or even terrorism.

Everything I’ve written here could apply to present-day America.

But it also describes the decades-long ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland.

Today I found myself listening to the song ‘New Year’s Day’ by the Irish band U2. It’s on an album, War, that’s been in my collection since the mid-1980s, not long after its 1983 release.

All is quiet on New Year’s Day. A world in white gets underway.

I listened to these words this morning as I walked my dog through the snow-covered streets of my neighborhood. It captured the mood of the moment perfectly: tranquil, hopeful. A new day. A new year.

After this track ended, I listened to the next: ‘Like a Song…’ In an instant the album’s mood changes: intense, foreboding.

We love to wear a badge, a uniform. And we love to fly a flag. But I won’t let others live in hell. As we divide against each other, and we fight amongst ourselves. Too set in our ways to try to rearrange. Too right to be wrong in this rebel song.

I see so many flags flying nowadays. Some flags are the red, white and blue of Old Glory. American flags are everywhere now, and not just on flagpoles on people’s houses or in their yards.

But there are plenty of other flags besides. Some pledge allegiance to a person. Some to an idea. Some to a group. We are proud of what we believe in and who and what we support. We want the world to know: we are on the right side, our cause is just. We are the true patriots, faithful to the end.

Our side will prevail if we hold fast. If we commit our lives to it, whatever the cost. We will live for it, if necessary die for it – and if absolutely necessary, kill for it.

Echoes of this same story resound again and again throughout recorded history. Conflict. War. Genocide. It’s as old as humanity itself.

But hope springs eternal. The road to peace in Northern Ireland was long and rocky, but a peace did indeed come. It required both sides to commit to negotiation, conciliation, and reckoning. War is costly, but peace may be even costlier. It too exacts a price.

For the past few years I feel like forces both outside and inside our country have conspired to divide us. But on this New Year’s Day I’m feeling hopeful for the future. I believe that peace is possible, if each of us is willing to pay its price.

It’s true, it’s true, we can break through

Though torn in two, we can be one

I will begin again, I will begin again

‘New Year’s Day,’ U2, 1983