Happy New Year!
Let’s hope the new year brings happiness. We have had three tough years in a row with pandemic, war and inflation. ‘Bad things come in threes’ as an old saying goes. Maybe the spell breaks now.
When lockdown ended, it was as if people were making up for lost time with activities ‘on steroids’ – doing everything, everywhere, all the time. Life became breathless, noisy, high-speed. But stillness is equally important. American artist Rockwell Kent, who wandered in the Alaskan wilderness, explained that ‘In the quietness, when nothing happens, the soul expands.’
‘In the busyness of life, we neglect the soul’s need to expand – to hear the flutter of butterfly wings, smell the pines, taste morning dew, see the shooting star – sounds and sights that make us realize how fragile, fleeting and forceful Life is.’
We are small in the vastness of the universe yet connected to the mite and the mighty. The individual and the universal, the immediate and the eternal – it’s all connected. Writer Virginia Woolf wrote that ‘the whole world is a work of art, and we are parts of that work of art.’ This gives us the encouragement and perspective to deal with the bad – while hoping that the good things will now come in threes.
If hope is just wishful thinking or passive optimism, it achieves little. Hope is the motivating force that makes good things happen. Hope motivated humankind’s historic journey on this miracle called Earth. This year, planet, peace, pandemic, prices will be on everyone’s minds. We can make good things happen to planet Earth and to each other.
Wishing you and your family all good things in 2023!
Best regards
Anita Pratap
President