new years resolution

tempus fugit. time passes. time flys. like many others, every new year’s i make new year’s resolutions. i’ve made more than my fair share of resolutions which ranged from the frivolous e.g. quitting cigarettes, losing weight – to the cerebral e.g. making this a better place to live for all forms of life that follow and with varying degrees of success and failure for both.

but in the autumn of my years it was time to make one resolution to work toward by passing it to those that follow and since for the moment i seem to be free of procrastination’s hesitating grip after days of delays i have found the right words to express my last new year’s resolution. what follows is my journey in yova’s world from new years eve to the eve of the martin luther king day celebration in search of the words which express this new year’s resolution.

new years is usually celebrated with family and friends gathering for parties where alcohol dilutes the usual inhibitions. fireworks and festivities take place all around while i tried to find a corner in a crowded room to be left alone to wonder what’s all the fuss about for man making it around the block one more time without progressing any closer toward an understanding of interdependence and remaining precariously one step away from disappearing into cosmic dust by yielding to some propensity of this species to self destruct.

if there is a creator should not his creation show their worship by their actions as well as their words? and if there is no creator since animals kill to survive it seems we are only above animals because we kill based on this cause or that, this religion or that, this flag or that, this ideology or that, ad infinitum this duality which is ours to overcome by cooperating rather than competing if we are ever to build a peaceful planet. why are we so afraid to alter the course of our existence for the better?

how much longer can this species ignore the reality that we cause suffering to each other and as such we alone can end that endless cycle of suffering? if there is a creator that put man on this planet, and created all that is – by now we should know we’re on our own and we better catch on quick or squander an opportunity to prosper as a planet.

it seems that the current model of society which has dominated our culture for several hundred years consists of ideas and values which view man as machine and life as a competitive struggle for existence, a belief in unlimited material progress achieved through economic and technological growth, and the belief that a society in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male is one that is “natural”.

today the united states celebrated the life of martin luther king. politicians and preachers alike so somber when they recite the message of the man who dared to dream of freedom. the press will shape perceptions when they repeat the words of representatives of the very institutions that continue to prevent dr king’s dream of freedom from becoming a reality.
isn’t there anyone in the media willing to mention the rank hypocrisy of shooting the messenger, ignoring the message and then celebrating his life?
no one is free when others are oppressed. the war on terror is orwellian for the war on freedom but as long as the truth shall set you free the dream will never die. isn’t it better to die than live in fear and hate as neitzsche and those he influenced would suggest? isn’t truth the highest form of god that gandhi spoke of?

the last of my new years resolutions: to subvert the dominant paradigm by speaking truth to power so that suffering will begin to cease and the dream will come true that “one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal”.


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