We are well into the new year, well, only three days really, but we are already settling into it. The partying is over and so too the good cheer and best wishes, and probably the goodwill as well. These, apparently are seasonal, like the festive period. We are quickly getting back to our old ways, returning to our favourite vices (I don’t hear much about virtues), the new year and resolutions made notwithstanding. Some will rush ahead; others plod along as always. There will be hustlers and others who wonder what the hassle is all about. Those whose usual brooding was temporarily lifted by the festive season will return to their normal state as will the liars, cheats and thieves. Drunks will carry on, except perhaps those in public service for whom imbibing a little too much is becoming risky. All who could, celebrated the coming of the new year, welcomed it like a long-awaited guest accustomed to bringing goodies. We celebrate even when we do not know what sort they are, whether they will please or disappoint, bring joy or sorrow or indifference. We celebrate that we have lived to see another year – really the same as we do every morning for a new day. Only this time it is on a larger time scale and so we mark it with appropriate splash.Some do it in excess; others in moderation. Even those with meagre means will find a way to mark this important passage of time. I often wonder what we feel about the year that has just ended. It seems to be forgotten very quickly. Maybe some say: thank God it’s gone. What a terrible time it was! It should have ended long before and saved them from the misery. For these the new one cannot get worse, only better. Others perhaps look back on it with regret, that it passed too soon. Things were looking bright and so they have had more time to enjoy it all. Or they did not have time to complete some business. Or they had successes in it and can’t be sure if it will be the same in the new. There must be some who don’t care much. It does not make any difference one way or the other. And the new one, what is the general attitude? Some are upbeat about what is coming and what they will do. They are full of ideas and plans and projects, and think this is an opportunity to make their mark. Their only worry is the new year may be too short for them to accomplish all they plan. For others, there is always the hope that it will be different and better, bring more joy and less pain, better rewards and fewer regrets, and more harmony than discord. It is a chance to make amends for failures and shortcomings of the past year, put matters right, or make a fresh start. And then there are those for whom it does not really matter. It will probably be the same as the one ended, leave behind the same unresolved issues. And so they will likely go through it with a great deal of indifference or resignation. But perhaps we don’t really think about these things or we push them away from our consciousness. Some make usuncomfortable as they reveal our fragility and insecurity. Waking up to a new day or a new year is a sort of unexpected bonus. We don’t know what the next day will be like, which makes every moment precious and worthy of celebration. Which perhaps explains why we have contrived to give what is the biggest global secular occasion a religious dimension. While some party and wait to see fireworks go off to usher in the new year, others fill places of worship and other public spaces to keep vigil for the dying year and thank God for giving them a new one. It is an acknowledgement of his power as the ultimate giver of all gifts, including life, which, of course, we measure ona timescale. And so celebration of the new year that sometimes carries on as if there will be no other is really the expression of a mixture of gratitude and relief that you have gone through the year unscathed, or with only minor scratches and bruises, survived terrible disaster when all around there are upheavals and uncertainty and death. As these thoughts on another view of new year celebrations passed through my mind, I realised how it was difficult in some parts of our neighbourhood to join in the optimism of a better tomorrow. In some of these parts, goodwill is desperately short. Instead, there is an abundance of ill-will. Some in authority, emboldened by the support they get from a callous world, are determined to deny their citizens their very existence. Luckily, those targeted are also determined not to be exterminated, and there are others who are doing something about it. But there is hope that the rest of the world will wake up to this danger and help end it. It is only a hope, but we always live in hope. That is what the new year offers – hope that things will change and become better.
