An Open Letter to New Year!

Dear 2020,

Hope you have started adjusting your life to this planet by now. You are the first child of the new decade and you are already six days old. You will always be the dearest among your siblings. All your nine younger ones will be learning everything from you. They will follow your footsteps no matter where it leads to. So always be extra careful in where you place your steps so that your younger ones will always look up to you.

I am not sure whether you know you have only 366 days of life here. (In fact you have an extra day because you are one of those lucky ‘leap’ ones!) During this 12 months period you’ll have 4 different seasons, and you’ll be balancing the good and the bad weathers without complaint. I think it’s a lesson for us humans that nothing lasts forever, everything happens for a reason, and goes round in cycles.

When you leave this world after 12 months, people will celebrate and welcome your younger sibling with pomp and splendour, just like you were 6 days back when your elder sibling left. But I know you will not feel sad when you leave just like you weren’t overjoyed when you came. The lesson here is, I think, other people’s acts should not affect us too much.

I assume the first month of your life you will be using for literature survey to have a better understanding of the past happenings. I can help you in that process. Do you use Google or Wikipedia for that? Or do you have all of that stored in your memory before you enter the world itself? Whatever it is, I’ll tell you a few things that come to my mind.

It’s been a rollercoaster of a decade and one that will truly never be forgotten. Though the two decades before the last decade witnessed the computer boom, the last decade definitely belonged to smartphones. It started with the entry of the iPhone! Then came apps. Due to smartphones we have gained a lot and lost many things too. Though they help us connect to each other over distances, they have the effect of our disengaging as well with each other in the real world.

My generation has seen the rotary-dial phone as well as the new age smartphone. My father never used a mobile phone whereas my kids never keep their smartphones down. The tiny phone changed everything about our lives. Earlier a phone was used to just call someone. Then new facilities started getting added like texting, taking pictures, emailing, wake-up calls, and so on. Now a stage has come where our entire lives revolve around this tiny pocket device. And it is at the cost of our privacy. I think it’s a major setback.

In the last decade, countries have been planning to send man into space and we have seen major advances in Mars exploration too. The irony is people are not bothered to visit even their next door neighbour but they are getting ready to visit the red planet! Anyway I am sure you may bring even more exciting news, possibly the discovery of life on the red planet! Your predecessor also witnessed  AI (Artificial Intelligence), ML (Machine Learning), and the seeds of self-driving car, just to name a few!

We have witnessed the technology boom within a short period. I can see and feel that the sudden rush of technology advancements make people restless and confused. Unplugging from a world where everything is at our fingertips is not easy.

Archimedes once said: ‘Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.’ Now if there is a smartphone and WiFi, anyone can move the world! Maybe you are aware that Einstein’s ‘e=mc²’ in 1905 was instrumental for the invention of the atomic bomb in 1945. I just hope and pray these advancements in technology will not destroy mankind.

On the negative side, the last decade witnessed more abuse of women and children, and massacre based on religion and nationality than ever before. Safety of women irrespective of their age is a big concern these days.  Of all the living creatures on the planet man has become the cruelest.  The gap between the rich and the poor was also at its zenith in the last decade. The rich became filthy rich and the poor drowned in extreme poverty.

We also witnessed lots of natural calamities like floods, bushfire, hurricane, and so forth. To be frank, those were not ‘natural’; they were ‘man-made’!   The Earth is screaming and people are acting deaf. Instead of taking collective steps in eradicating the so-called natural calamities, people are fighting for religion, colour and gender. Secularism, unity, compassion, and so on are just words in the dictionary now.

I know it is hard for you to start with a clean slate as the bygone decade and especially the last few years have been very hard and rough to humankind. So erasing the slate is not an easy task. Please make sure that at least by the end of the coming decade the world will be free from religion and gender inequality.

Emphasis the importance of art and literature in the modern fast-paced life. Instil awareness in people to not harm Mother Nature in any way and about global warming. Get people to be more open, decisive, concerned, caring, loving, mindful, focused, content and happy and moreover, more HUMAN! Get them to be conscious of their insignificant existence in the vast universe!

I hope you can lay the first stepping stone to a better world. You can be the turning point for a better world that humankind is desperately searching for! The world will be grateful to you for that.

Last but not least, I am not taking any new year resolution this year. Instead I am thinking I will keep track of my progress on a daily basis. And I’ll be keeping an eye on you too 🙂 All the best for all your future endeavours! Eagerly waiting to see what’s in store for me and the world in general, in the coming days.

With lots of love,

On behalf of everyone on this planet,

A Work-in-Progress Human Being!