New Year Wishes

Received a few new year greetings this year for 2006 and as they came and went, I didn't know what to think. 2006 seems awash with changes already, most of them spilling over from 2005, and it doesn't really feel like a whole new year has started. Do we use different calendars? I'm still on the current fiscal year. Do we see life from new lenses? I still feel the same, I'm still doing the same things as I used to do. With how blaise I am about this whole thing, many greetings passed me by as routine like a clock chiming the same tunes.

But one greeting did stand out in my mind. It said, have a meaningful new year!

And that got me thinking.

I've been speaking to a few of my close friends and we're all coming up with the same thing. After a few years of working in a 9-5 job it starts to hit you to wonder why we wake up each morning, to reassess where we we are in comparison to where we wanted to be when we first graduated, bright-eyed and hopeful, waiting to unleash ourselves into the world. We all came up with the same thing: that this, whatever we were doing, was not what we wanted to do for the rest of our lives. We envy the people around us who seem to be following the road less traveled – we wish we had the courage to start charities, or to be in London enjoying the trials of a second degree, or in Sierra Leone, saving the world as it were.

I woke up into the world with a single driving force – to make a difference. I wanted to know that what I did meant something at all, that it made a difference in people’s lives, and hopefully in a positive way. I wanted to feel that every day, there was meaning to what I did, that you could see the impact it had, that it changed lives, or at least pushed aside a little bit the mountain load of obstacles that stand in Life’s way.

And it seems that along the way, each of us got waylaid in that noble goal in some way or other.

Which comes back full circle to me – after writing numerous Christmas and New Year cards which I didn’t mean, I wanted to wish everyone a happy new year greeting that I did mean. And my apologies for plagiarizing to some extent, but I wish for everyone a very meaningful new year.

May the coming year bring you something new that you have not experienced before
A new hope, a lesson learnt, a love in your life, a warmth, a friendship, an old flame, a memory
May you travel far and wide in pursuit of your heart to distant shore
And as you return come back to waiting arms and pleasant dreams
May friends connect from distant places,
May you find everywhere new friendly faces,
And each day bring you closer to where you looked forward to.
Let this year live for longer than the one we left behind,
That we might wake each day full knowing what we have,
Yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Have a wonderful new year, everyone. Let this year be different from the one we left behind.