The New Year is unlike other holidays, as it is not limited to those who belong to one religion or nation, but is a celebration we can all relate to: the ending of the old and the beginning of the new.
Every year, we join in solidarity with the new, by making actual resolutions to do or to not do at least one thing that we know will make us better human beings than we were in the old year, empowered to create the changes we long to see in the new.
As we approach 2012, the world we inhabit seems never to have been in more dire need of change. Every day brings increasing threats to our well-being, individually and globally. There are times when fear so clouds our vision and pollutes the air we breathe, that our world too closely resembles a madhouse.
People everywhere are consciously contributing to the destruction of their very own life support systems, internally and externally. Liberty and justice for the very few remains the policy of every government on earth, and violence, its solution of choice. People are starving to death, while others are gorging themselves to the same end. Communication is drowning in lies, whatever device or language we use. Wherever we care to look, the superficial is exalted, as the profound is belittled. And whoever our leaders may be, greed and corruption continue to reign supreme.
Many of us, disturbed by this state of affairs, face the coming year with some trepidation. Not that we don’t have our optimistic moments when we believe that our escalating problems will somehow, magically be solved in a way we cannot see now. But, too often, these moments are followed by hours, days, and for some, even weeks of utter despair in the face of the harsh realities that we do see, at every turn.
Those of us who believe that what we do or don’t do has a significant effect on the fate of the world, feel a growing sense of responsibility to evolve in all possible ways, as the new year approaches. But when we think about actually accomplishing so daunting a task, we wonder how many resolutions it would take and how many we are willing to make to save us from ourselves, before it’s too late.
This is the dilemma that faces every ethically-minded person at the brink of 2012.
Would that there was just one resolution we could make that would act as a panacea for all our ills!
The truth is that there is one resolution that would, in fact, lift us and the whole world to heights we could not have imagined; far above the hopelessness that has plagued us in the old year, to a new confidence in ourselves and in our future.
Just this one resolution – to eliminate the activities and products of cruelty and injustice from our daily lives – would not only help stop the destruction of our life support systems, but would rebuild and support them. Liberty and justice would expand to include all sentient beings.
Just this one resolution will evolve our entire human family from being predators, whose inhumanity towards our own and other species has defined our nature throughout the ages, to being guardians of all that is good and beautiful in life on this precious earth.
By freeing our minds of old, worn-out beliefs that demand we justify the unjustifiable and liberating our hearts from the pain of living in defiance of our true nature, we will change the course of humanity, from the darkness of the old, to the brightest new year we have ever seen.
