Today is the first day of the New Year – 2012. A new year gives us new hopes. We feel as if we are ready to forget the previous failures and errors and start all over again. By playing our respective role, someday we will be able to eradicate poverty and make Pakistan a middle-income country. Our New Year’s resolution is to see a happy Pakistan.
It’s time! The mother earth has completed her 365 diurnal motions, and gifted us another new year. It’s time to brainstorm over New Year resolutions, to contemplate and baffle ourselves with streams of expectations and scraps of regrets. It’s time to be chirpy and resilient and border our cloud nine with silver linings.
We have welcomed the New Year, despite the bomb threats, despite tight security, despite political confrontation, terrorism, economic and financial hardships hanging over us like mushroom clouds. Nothing stopped us from the celebration of one night, from wishing each other a Happy New Year, our mobile phones bleating with SMS to exchange goodwill. Our nation was still quivering with the impact of suicide bombings like the body of a slain beast in its last spasms. We welcomed the New Year while hundreds of thousands of farmers, teachers and flood and earthquake victims are still freezing in the cold, fasting to death in the hope that the government will pay attention to their plight.
Yet, we danced and sang in drunken frenzy, flesh pressing flesh, limbs going up and down, bodies twisted in the senseless reflex of primal instincts. The liquor brewed storms in our head, our blood boiling in the heat of ecstasy, our minds howling like raging beasts. There was unprecedented security in the capital. God knows how much it cost the taxpayers to keep some people in their drunken stupor!
At the philosophical level, nothing was wrong with it. Nothing was wrong with having an extra day of party. We need to have more fun to sublimate the pain and anxiety that are wasting away the vitality of our nation.
We all know it would not lasts forever, our resolutions mostly forgotten by the time we get done with our hangover, by the time the sun goes down on the first day of the New Year. By that time the flower shops, mobile phone companies, liquor stores, hotels and restaurants have done brisk business. Some people buy new dress, new shoes and then cook rich food. Many people are superstitious. They believe that how they live on the first day will determine how they also live for the rest of the year. There are those who don’t incur any spending, because they believe they would squander throughout the year unless they start saving from day one. We always start a year by promising so many encouraging, constructive and beneficial things we would do. We tend to make a promise in the backdrop of the year just about to pass. We always put aside what we did wrongly in the last 365 days. But how many times did we wonder how did we pass the year? How many times did we try to unearth the causes of the wrong happenings?
Most of the time we want to forget the past rather than learn something from it. How can we stop recurrence of the same misjudgments if we don’t learn from it? If we don’t learn from the past happenings, all the unwanted things will take place over and over again. That is why it is particularly important that we learn from the past and discover what went wrong.
Without reviewing the past, it should be another misjudgment to think about or promise for the future. ‘Past is past’ should not be uttered as an excuse. Without past, the present cannot come forth and without the present the future will never come. Past is like a foundation. We all know, whatever the design of a building, a sound foundation is a must. Even if the foundation is not sound, the loops must be filled taking the mistakes or misjudgments or miscalculations in mind. Otherwise, the most beautiful structure will collapse.
We should review meticulously what we have done in the past. Then we must figure out the actions and events that turned out to be unfavourable. After this we must think about what might and should have been done. We must move onto analyze our lacking then. After the analysis, we must put together a corrective action plan. With this set plan we should then take our steps in deciding what we will do to make our next resolutions. However, our job does not particularly finish right there. We must see through that we do what we have promised to ourselves to do. It is indeed a good practice starting afresh and showing optimism. But in my opinion it is equally imprudent not to scan through the past and take lesson from it. The best gift of the past is the experience. As the most intelligent living being in this planet, it is our task that we use our experience. Hence before making any new year’s resolution, please review the year that is passed. Because, the more you review the more you will learn and the less misjudgement you will make and the happier your life will be. Talk about resolutions, my resolution for this year is that I wouldn’t be taking any resolutions at all. Year 2011 was a fluxed one; it left me with reasons and lessons, setting a glass ceiling for my new-year expectations this time. There are quite a handful of things I want to see becoming reality this year, not only for me, but for a lot of people out there. When there is existence of problems awaiting to be addressed, it’s not the time for glitzy resolutions.
According to an ancient Chinese Philosophy, “We can change the world by beginning with ourselves; Each time we change our own behaviour, people around us have to respond differently. They can’t keep doing the same dance because the rules have changed.”
The question is whether we have resolved anything. Have we had the time to think of the common good as we got incrementally drunk, and the music got louder with our hysteric bodies? Did we take the time to talk about our woebegone country and its fraying future? Or did we behave like the village idiot who sawed off the same branch of a tree on which he was sitting astride? If we rejoiced on the New Year’s Day, did it occur to us that we were immersed in the sea of sorrow, our past depleted, our present diminished, our future threatened?
Now, if the old is gone, what is new? What is new that we have resolved before walking into the dense cloud where our minds plunged into false pretence? What have we got to celebrate when the parliament doesn’t protect, the government doesn’t rule, and the people don’t have power? What have we got to celebrate when the faithful are ferocious and the devout are deluded? What have we got to celebrate when education doesn’t give knowledge, wisdom doesn’t give foresight, and character doesn’t give courage? In the drunken spree between the last night of one year and the first morning of another, did we get to think of it? Probably yes, probably not. Let us have this one resolution for next time. When we wake up in the morning, we shall at least remember if we thought of it. Yet it’s a New Year, a new hope, a new beginning. Let’s start it afresh, with ambient hopes and blissful believes for a better future, a brighter tomorrow. Let’s take a small step towards the long strides of the journey yet to begin.
Happy New Year everyone!
