It is a new year filled with opportunities and a casting aside of the old ways that no longer satisfy. It is time to ring in the new.

In Washington D.C., the new is a new federal government now run by the wealthy few. The new president has handpicked the wealthiest man on earth to strip the waste from government programs that serve the poorest Americans and the average person who relies on Social Security, Medicare and similar programs for their basic health and economic well being. His new cabinet will be comprised almost exclusively of billionaires.

The question everyone is asking is whose interests will they serve? They are all so rich that they have no need whatsoever for further wealth for themselves, so there are some who have concluded that they will work on behalf of the many who are not so fortunate. Time will tell whether their policies serve only the rich or all of us.

I must admit to a bit of concern that one of their first declared goals is to extend the tax cuts for the rich enacted several years ago. This will allow the already wealthy to further enrich themselves through tax cuts. This is something that would seem contrary to the belief that they will work for the general good.

This would seem like an excellent time for character-building exercises. We, no doubt, will be called upon to resist efforts by the newly installed government to reduce benefits to seniors and perhaps abolish programs that serve low-income people generally and others that mainly help the struggling middle class. It is telling that one of the first programs the newly installed multi-billionaire in charge of government efficiency managed to cut from the new federal budget was a $200 million investment in research to address childhood cancer.

Those of us who never voted for this, especially in places such as Washington state where a significant majority of voters rejected this path, will be called upon to resist so much of what they intend to enact in Washington D.C. This may take forms as simple as calls and letters to legislators and support for legal challenges. More likely it will require more drastic measures, such as economic boycotts and refusal to cooperate with federal authorities rounding up vulnerable neighbors or using our tax money for things we oppose.

In order to muster the courage to resist we might want to remind ourselves of the wise words of our best storytellers and truth tellers, such as the advice of Virginia Woolf: “Whatever happens, stay alive. Don’t die before you’re dead. Don’t lose yourself, don’t lose hope, don’t lose direction. Stay alive, with yourself, with every cell of your body, with every fiber of your skin. Stay alive, learn, study, think, read, build, invent, create, speak, write, dream, design. Stay alive, stay alive inside you, stay alive also outside, fill yourself with colors of the world, fill yourself with peace, fill yourself with hope. Stay alive with joy. There is only one thing you should not waste in life, and that’s life itself.”

And there is the inspiring speech of one of his hobbits in JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, when Sam tells us: “By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something. …That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.”

Let’s have a happy new year. One worth fighting for.

Dr. Michael Seraphinoff is a Whidbey Island resident, a former professor at Skagit Valley College and academic consultant to the International Baccalaureate Organization.