A year passes by and we look back to reflect on what happened.  You are happy with some events and sad with others.  You look at the new year with hope. A new year is like the morning sun, which brings hope and light to life every day.  The old year is like the sun set, which fades into the past but still gives you the hope that the sun rise the next day will dawn new aspirations in your life.

While many of us pass new resolutions to exercise regularly, go to the gym or lose weight or visit parents, we tend to break them even before the dust settles on them.  Is it a weakness or the lack of will ?  I do not know but neither I want to. It is better to keep resolving till the day one is able to keep up to them rather than no resolutions at all.

I am a born optimist and hence never give up.  I may have made hundreds of resolutions in my life and may be fulfilled half of them.  It is a joy to make promises to yourselves and try to keep them up.  So what if we fail in some.  It is always better to try then to give up even before you make them.  A simple example could be that I tried to do yoga every day for many years and failed every single time.  But two years back I went to learn yoga in a authentic school in Lonavala and the teacher was so good that she inspired me to do it every day.  Today my wife and me practise it almost daily and voluntarily.

While every day can be a new year, why do we wait for the new year to resolve ?  It may be like having food every day, which we do religiously.  But, we have special food only on festive days.  A new year is a symbol of something new.  It helps us to pause and reflect.  It helps us to forget and forgive.  It helps us to commit more than we can deliver.

I love the new year.  It helps us to forget the miseries of the past.  It infuses hope and optimism in us.  It gives us reasons to believe that tomorrow may be better than yesterday and today.  It re kindles our wishes.  It gives us renewed energy to resolve.  It compels us to move on in life.  It is like the clock, which never stops until we forget to rewind or change the batteries.

It is up to us to rewind and recharge ourselves.  Nothing is permanent in life.  Neither joy nor sorrow will sustain forever.  Our ability to forget and forgive the past and hope for a better future will help us maintain balance in life. The dawn of the new year gives us an opportunity to do so.  It is an occasion to look back and move forward. 

The new year is like the morning dew in a forest.  It is ephemeral.  It is fresh.  It refreshes you and give you a chance to renew yourselves.  It is up to us to take charge and do it.  As the sun opens up in the sky, the morning dew is gone.  The same is with the new year.  As the days pass, the year is gone and we have to wait for yet another new year.

Let us wake up and resolve today

S Ramesh Shankar