An old article by Chinmaya Mission founder Swami Chinmayananda wishing everyone a new year, never gets old (pun intended!).
It’s not just the usual Happy New Year wish that we all practise at the turn of each year. Rather, he turns the question on its head, and asks if really anything is new.
Aren’t we still the same morose, dejected, anxious, desperate, demanding, greedy, selfish (I can add many more such words to describe my own mind!) people that we were just the eve of the new year? What changed then just as the clock struck twelve?
Swami C asks this very question. If one day to the next is exactly the same, then what are we celebrating? The quality of time is not moving or changing. It is us humans who have divided time into minutes and hours and days and years, and we keep track of it, and rejoice as it apparently whizzes past us.
But the true happy new year as Swami C concludes, is only when we change and transform ourselves, and become better, more evolved, spiritual beings. The moment that happens, it is indeed the dawn of a very happy new year!