Sir, - When I was 49 I wasted a year of my life in the shadow of being 50 the following year and it seems that it is what we are all doing now: living in the future, looking with frantic anticipation to the millennium.
This year, 1999, will have its own identity. There will be births, marriages, deaths, the joys and sorrows that each 12 months bring. There will be each changing season. Governments will fall and governments will be formed. There will be war and peace, just like there is every year, and 1999 will have its own share of the triumph and disaster of ordinary, everyday living. It will stand on its own, not simply as a fore-runner to the year 2000.
As we hurtle towards the future, let us remember that today is today and should be lived as such. - Yours, etc.,
Joan Lombard, Knocknashee, Goatstown, Dublin 14.