Year of hope
This is the year we lived in, and what a year it was, testing but so rewarding as humans

January 23, 2006
iranian.com

Last year began under the shadow of Tsunami and ended with heart wrenching earthquakes in South Asia. As our mother earth twist and turns in her sleep on the bed of eternity, even slightest movements cause major tectonic movements; our human ventures to challenge and defy nature sometimes is ridiculed by Mother Nature with rage. It is not that providence has stopped loving us or we are being punished for some kind of excess, it is tradition of fate to level efforts that defy nature.

This is the consequence of defiance. We are not meant to be flying our natural selection creation did not take that into consideration nor are we suppose to live below the sea levels. When eruptions happen or machines fail we are struck with tragedies. We must learn to accept this as a price of disobedience and insubordination. Evolution is marked with trial of ordeal and torment. In defiance lies our survival, the reason we are here is because we defy, we have change the course of natural selection!

We all feel so inadequate as calamities take a heavy toll on mankind. We live on a breathing planet; transformation is an essential ingredient of our earth, sometimes quiet, others tumultuous and chaotic. Much as these tragedies take the pleasure out of our festivities, we should be pleased about our collective capability to come out of tragedies intact. To be happy is not a sin; commemoration does not mean bereavement, rather, one can celebrate our determination to share our pains and resolve to reach out and lend a hand. That is the lesson I am motivated with for 2006.

We should also appreciate how many unbridgeable distances between faiths have been crossed as a result of tragedies. 7/7 suicide bombers in a callous and barbaric act buried blameless Londoners. Under a pile of rubble comes 8/11, some of the same Londoners volunteered to pull out the compatriots of these bombers, the victims of the earthquake under the rubbles of Margallas. It was the most poignant moment for me; humans at their best, no guile, no hatred, and no vengeance, nor an inkling of reprisal, but only love consuming the hatred propagated by few. This is the year we lived in, and what a year it was, testing but so rewarding as humans.

Some may find this correlation objectionable, but in terms of our mellowness, this for me was the vision of the year, the thought that always dominated me since October tragedy, I remained ever grateful since then to those who helped us out in times of our need; the Cubans, the Americans flying hundreds of sorties saving limbs from amputations securing the future of a nation that was devastated. It was most painful, but I see the silver lining to this catastrophe. We as humans came out big. We should be proud of our achievements.

Natural disasters are easy to handle and forget it is the tyranny of thought that leaves deeper scars. Emergence of new demagogues and bigots impose novel challenges on mankind collective rich culture and civilisation. Religious bigotry and control on thoughts are bigger menace; a mind that is incarcerated is as contemptible as a body that is left to perish. Unfortunately we see human misery in terms of body count but fail to see millions of newly imprisoned minds under the tutelage of religious extremists. Why any effort to free minds is not considered as relief work? That bizarre intellectual enigma I would like to see resolved in 2006.

It is hard to accept the fact, but humankind collectively responds well to collective tragedies that we face. On individual levels we have definitely become territorial, but on larger scale of things, the realization of a common thread of togetherness that connects our lives is so apparent and dominant. We are going through a paradigm shift; mankind faces new challenges and developments that are so unique -- like the discovery of fire and invention of wheel in our infancy. We are at the cusp of a new level of global consciousness and understanding; hope is breaking out all over; human journey to adolescence and puberty could not have been better designed or envisaged.

We have started appreciating that our pains and our pleasures are so interlinked. In this new year let us feel happy and grateful for what providence has bestowed on us. The new togetherness and the new fusion is a sign of new maturity; it is definitely a turbulent coming together, but what a century and a decade, and what a pace! Time is speeding what we have achieved; in the last decade alone can over encompass collective evolutionary development of billons of years. We live in very interesting times, let's make one wish: never to lose hope, never to say yes to despair.