An old year has left us behind and a new one beckons in front of us – as we count in terms of numerical years
we move ahead on a linear trajectory but in a more realistic and cosmic sense,
we’ve only come back to the same place that we had visited one year ago. Our
path is more circular than linear – after all a year is primarily the earth
completing one revolution around the sun!
While it is good, noble and
certainly more celebratory to think of this as a new beginning but in a more
deeper sense its taking another round of the same ol’ road – albeit more
carefully, more knowingly and hopefully one more time wiser.
Life has one beginning – right when
we were born, the remaining are all milestones and check-points. This year
would soon turn old, everything about it would be the same mundane and usual –
and it’s not wrong. After all, that’s exactly how it is. Life will throw the
same set of opportunities, challenges, fears and euphoria. We may find it at a
new place, a new time or a new set of people – but at the heart of it all – the
emotions would remain alike.
Every component of measuring time
– seconds, minutes, hours, dates and months – everything follows a circular
path, everything reoccurs – it’s only the factor of an ‘year’ that moves linear
- ahead in one direction, never to come back!
A New Year therefore reminds us that
there’s possibly one more chance – to correct, comprehend and collaborate! To love,
lose and learn! To accept, acknowledge and appreciate!
A new year is more about
looking at things afresh, taking a fresh approach and having a new sense of
purpose. The earth would take the same circular path around the sun that it has
done since the beginning of father time, and yet it offers scope for us to see,
experience and live something new.
Novelty lies not in the ability
to find new things all the time, it exists in the inherent desire to see
something new in what we’ve been seeing all along.
A New Year would make for
enough novelty, even if everything remained the same and all that changed was
me & my perspective! Every day would still be new, and every experience would
be one I hadn’t had before. However, each new year we like to be the same and
wish for the world around us to make it more new. We seeker newer pastures, new
people and new horizons – none of which actually exist!
Each existing individual in our
life is a new person waiting to be discovered, a layer waiting to be unwrapped,
new facets of them to be unraveled!
Each past event in our life is
a new experience waiting to be re-lived, a road waiting to be ventured again, a
painting waiting to be re-looked!
Each unaccomplished goal is a
new challenge waiting to be re-attempted, a problem waiting to be seen from a
new perspective, a territory waiting to be re-claimed!
Very little of the New Year
will remain new in a week, but plenty of me could be renewed while the year
unfolds. In a matter of another 12 months, we’ll be back at the same place – a year
older hopefully it’d also be richer in terms of experience and wiser in terms
of thinking! Or it’d be just a dreary jaunt across the cosmos and we’d hardly
have moved an inch forward!
Which of the two is true for us? 'Cos that would determine if we're we ushering a year of moving ahead, or are we just going around one more time!