And here comes the year 2025!
And there goes the year 2024. The year 2024 is gone. It is past. Gone with it are people who never knew that that their time was up. Gone with with it were the hopes and aspirations some had nursed throughout the year 2023. For some, the year 2024 was that in which life lost […]
And there goes the year 2024. The year 2024 is gone. It is past. Gone with it are people who never knew that that their time was up. Gone with with it were the hopes and aspirations some had nursed throughout the year 2023. For some, the year 2024 was that in which life lost all meanings; for others, it was one in which new reasons to live and enjoy life were birthed. The Almighty says: ‘such are the days of earthly life (of varying fortunes) that We circulate it among humans: so that He may know those that believe, and that He may take to Himself from your ranks Martyrs …(Quran3: 140)
Thus in line with popular parlance, I say: ‘happy new year’. But exactly what is new in the New Year? This question agitated my mind a couple of days ago. I wanted to know what is new in the new month, in the new day. I wanted to feel happy, like my neighbour, to be merry, to indulge in self-love. I sought to know exactly where the train carrying the year 2024 would empty its content, its happiness, its sadness. I wanted to know exactly how many of us witnessed its arrival in 2024; I crave to know how many of us were at the station, the train station of 2024, waiting to bid it bye as it departed. Yes. 2024 departed But to where? Where has 2024 gone?
Could it be that contrary to our assumption, 2024 is nothing but a sign, a signifier? Yes. This year and the one before it signify something other than themselves. They point directly at me and you. The signified is you and me. It is us. We are actually the ones at the train station. We are the ones waiting to depart. We are the ones who have accumulated the nights and days; we are the ones who have exhausted three hundred and sixty-five out of the days allocated to us when we began our journeys from our fathers’ loins into our mothers’ wombs before our arrival to this world. We are the ones at the train stations of life and living. We are the ones arriving even as others are departing!
Thus waiting to chance upon that magical moment when 2024 would depart and yield space to 2025 was like waiting to know exactly that moment when days mesh into nights. It is like trying to know the colour or complexion of happiness and sadness. It is like seeking to experience the beatitude of the celestial space while we are still bogged down in the morass and in the insuperable conditions of the terrestrial.
I soon came to the conclusion that nothing is new in the New Year except the new things and experience we invest it with. The New Year is nothing but an open book given to us by He in whose hands lie the portents of the heavens and the earth. The New Year is nothing but the new breadth we take of life and give to life. Nothing is new in the New Year but the new visions we have of and for ourselves and our world. The New Year is neither a beginning nor an end for in the reckoning of His Majesty, the Almighty, there is no beginning nor an end. Ironically, however, the New Year shall be, for some, the beginning of the end the same way year 2024 was the end for some of our compatriots. To be alive to witness the “departure” of 2024 therefore is to be lucky and be privileged. For it is not by our choice or decision we found ourselves on this train, the train of life; it is not by our choice or decision we are changing this train in order to ride in the train of 2025; it is not going to be by our choice or decision when we shall be made to disembark from the train of life!
Brethren, let us therefore begin to live our lives fully and in the knowledge that we may arrive the ‘station’, the station of dis-embarkment sooner than we imagine. Let us equally work assiduously for life as if our destination is as distant as that of Prophet Nuh who lived for nothing less than nine hundred and fifty (950) years. The Prophet of Islam (s.a.w) says “ work for this life as if you are never going to die; work for your hereafter as if your death certificate has been signed and only waiting to be delivered”.
It shall be a New Year indeed when the roads are fixed and our hospitals cease being mortuaries. It shall be a New Year indeed when Christians become Christ-like inside and outside the Churches and Muslims becomes real Muslims in line with their Quranic destiny. It shall be a New Year worthy of these celebrations when this atrocious narcissism is excised from our politics and politicians. What a New Year that would be when cats become friends to rats, when sheep find companionship in lions and when the rich stop counting their wealth by the sheer number of the poor in the neighborhood.