Guest column | New Year beckons a fresh resolution - be empathetic

While life cannot be viewed in compartments segregated by the New Year, many people still see it as a temporal landmark. For me, life is a travelogue filled with saucy and tangy moments mostly floating on gigantic emotional curves.

The old year is about to depart

The epiphany came from musings and meanderings from the good times, which took me to a treasure trove of memories. (ANI)

New year beckons - promises a lot

I wish just to be silly today

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A bouquet of loving array

Some take New Year seriously, others bid it adieu just after the clock strikes 12, and then there are those who look at the new year as a second chance in life to strive and achieve goals with positive vibes. The turn of the year makes me realise that time is fleeting and ephemeral and one cannot maintain life’s balance sheet.

While life cannot be viewed in compartments segregated by the New Year, many people still see it as a temporal landmark. For me, life is a travelogue filled with saucy and tangy moments mostly floating on gigantic emotional curves. As the years coalesced into one another, I realise each year has been celebratory, in one way or the other with moments good as well as grey, rather, than the hoopla of materialistic commercialisation surrounding the first day of the year.

The epiphany came from musings and meanderings from the good times, which took me to a treasure trove of memories. They made my present glow like a sparkling diamond. Thus, New Year can be redefined as a string of endless yet diverse moments illuminating the seashore of life. The New Year houses 12 months and each day has 8,64,00 seconds. We have so many moments to live in a day, but do we live them well? Or, are we too busy making resolutions.

The word ‘resolution’ by definition means ‘strong will’.The beauty and truthfulness of resolutions is independent of the buzz that New Year eve creates. Any day can be a new beginning to savour joy, seal a broken bond, release negativity, laugh at follies, create not consume, innovate and not destroy, and be compassionate and not cruel.

History of resolutions

New Year resolutions date back to around 4,000 years ago. At that time, the Babylonians would celebrate their new year in March to coincide with the sowing of their crops and they believed that what a person does on the first day of the new year will affect him or her throughout the year. A scary thought because on New Year most of us would wake up with the baggage of our past unsettling us.

A fairly simple exercise can keep us rooted in the present: live with an enlightened existence and move ahead just with one commitment, which is being empathic with our self-reflections so that we are able to live authentic lives.

In our increasingly violent world brimming with fragile egos and unresolved issues, empathy can be taught and learnt. It can be the most powerful tool to heal the feelings of us versus them.Empathy, the bridge between understanding and care, is an important skill in today’s world.

Empathy may not be a solution, but it can be a resolutionEmpathy, the ability to share the feeling of other, would help us cope with a changing,unpredictable world, and enlarge a personal world view to embrace those outside our own experiences and ideologies.Unless we make a determined commitment to get out of narrow and confined complacency we are doomed for darker days ahead. Empathy might not be a solution, but it can be a rekindled hope.

To quote American psychologist Carl Rogers ‘to sense the hurt or pleasure of another as he senses’ needs to be the mission of our lives. Empathy means to see the world through the eyes of someone. Let us be determined to wake up enlightened and renewed on the wings of empathy as a new dawn embraces us with alluring arms.

Happy tidings to all!

ritukumar.gmn@gmail.com

The writer is an associate professor of English at MLN College, Yamunanagar