Happy New Year! But What’s So New About the Year? By Mwangi Ndegwa

It's 2021.   2020 is gone never to return again. I know few of us have any good memories about the year gone by. It was full of...


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It’s 2021.   2020 is gone never to return again. I know few of us have any good memories about the year gone by. It was full of challenges, pain, tears, worries and disappointments.

For many, 2020 will be remembered for all the wrong things that happened. Many of us were glad when we saw the tail lights of the year 2020, as it faded into the history books and everybody was ready and eager to welcome a new baby, a brand new year, 2021. The major greetings so far is HAPPY NEW YEAR! Allow me to burst the bubble with some soul piercing insight. Consider a scenario here:

You get home from work and are feeling tired and worn out. The only thing you want to do is sleep. When you consider the prevailing factors, you decide even taking a shower is too big a task. So without a second thought, you jump into bed and within no time, you are in dreamland. My simple question is: will you wake up clean like a person who showered simply because it’s a new day? The answer is no.

A new day doesn’t take away what you carried forward. You have to make a conscious decision to leave it there. Coming back to our new year debate, I again pose a question. What’s new about the year? Does the change of numerical digits on the calendar make the year new? I don’t think so. The newness of the year is not contained on the calendar but inside of us. Any change we want to see must come from inside of us. If we enter 2021 with the same mindset and behaviours of yester year, then our lives will remain the same and we will still continue getting the same results as last year.

At this juncture, we need to ask ourselves what it is that you don’t like about the year gone by and then from the answer we get, we can know what needs to change and shift in the new year. The year will become new through the changes we make in our thinking and behaviours. A year is a measure of time and time has no character. Just like water, it takes the character and shape of the container and in this case, we are the containers and custodians of this time measure called 2021. It will be good or bad depending on those of us living at this moment and time. This is basically the reason why we hear different people having different opinions about the same year. Some have good reports others not so good reports of the same measure of time despite the fact that we were all exposed to the same conditions. So the newness of this year will depend on the newness of our thinking. Happy 2021! To read more posts by Mwangi, click HERE

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