For those of us paying attention, events of 2003 provided many lessons that, if applied in 2004 in our own lives, would make us wiser in the new year:

. from Bob Hope, who died last year at age 100, we learned the power of humor and laughter to transform us in the moment, even if the moment is during a war in Vietnam, or Korea, or Kuwait, or…;

. from Arnold Schwarzenegger we learned that America continues to be the land of opportunity for immigrants, that abusing women continues to be no barrier to success in politics or entertainment, and that if a fruitcake could be a state it would be California;

. from the war in Iraq we learned again the pain of being at war, when another young man’s high school yearbook picture in the news usually means another soldier has died on our behalf;

. from Saddam Hussein we learned that even if you dwell as a ruler in a palace you had better live your life as though you may some day end up a hermit in a rat hole, that life can turn on a dime and often does, and that no matter how big a man you are there is always someone bigger on life’s playground;

. from the recent revelation that former U.S. senator and segregationist Strom Thurmond fathered a daughter he never publicly acknowledged with an African-American woman, we learned once again that hypocrisy often lives in the closet of the house of righteousness, and that men of power and privilege can still be cowards;

. from his mixed-race daughter, who kept his hypocrisy secret until after he died, we learned that you can be the daughter of a maid and still have class and grace, and that she must have inherited those qualities from her mother;

. from Kobe Bryant we learned once again that rarely should our stars be our heroes;

. from Iraq we have learned that trouble is easier to get into than out of, that tearing anything apart is easier than rebuilding it, and courage, as individuals and as a nation, is found when we stick with the job after finding all of this out. Courage is not the lack of fear; courage is doing the job in the face of fear;

. from the Siamese twins from Iran who chose to have the life-threatening surgery to separate their heads, and from the Iraqi lawyer who helped us find captured American soldier Jessica Lynch, we learned that courage can be found in the Muslim world too;

. from Rush Limbaugh, the narcotic-addicted radio show paragon of righteous self-reliance, we learned that if you are arrogant enough to suggest to millions you are holier than thou you had better live your personal life as though your maid works for the National Enquirer;

. from intermittent news of former President Bill Clinton we learned how easy it is for the dishonorable things we do in the moment to become most of what people remember about us forever, sometimes flushing a life of hard work down the hopper of history. We are not made honorable by saying we are honorable, but rather by choosing to do the honorable thing at the moment when we have to choose between what we want to do and what we should do;

. from James Dyson, who took five years and made 5,000 prototypes to develop the Cyclone, the world’s hottest new vacuum cleaner, we learned the power of persistence, and to never, ever, give up a good idea;

. from William Janklow, former South Dakota governor and U.S. congressman, we learned that bad habits are meant to be given up before they get us in real trouble. Janklow drove like a bat out of hell for years, got multiple speeding tickets and probably deserved more. He finally ran a stop sign and killed a motorcyclist, teaching us that even if you keep getting away with doing the wrong thing, sooner or later someone is going to pay for it. With any luck, it will just be you;

. from the introduction of oil- and environment-sparing hybrid electric-gasoline cars we learned again that huge distances can be gained by millions of us taking small steps in the right direction;

. from the deaths of millions of AIDS victims around the world during 2003 we learned again the worldwide impact of millions of individual acts of ignorance and fear, and their collective power to change the world for the worse;

. from the recent news story of a pharmacist in rural Maine raising money for earthquake victims in faraway Iran we learned again the worldwide impact of millions of individual acts of human kindness, and their collective power to change the world for the better;

. from thousands of unnecessary deaths on American roads last year and every year, and millions of acts of violence and stupidity, we were reminded that the effect of excess alcohol is often to kick the legs out from under our judgment, knock the stuffing out of our principles, and divide our IQ by our blood alcohol level;

. from William Bennett, political powerhouse and paragon of family values who we discovered in 2003 gambles like a drunken sailor, we learned that few of those who make a living telling the rest of us how we ought to be better are as good as they expect the rest of us to be, and that all of us could do better.

Willingly or not, together these people and events all taught us it is worth trying to be as good as we can be in 2004, and at least better in some way than we were in 2003.

Erik Steele, D.O. is a physician in Bangor, an administrator at Eastern Maine Medical Center, and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region.