To New Beginnings.

What is it about this time of the year, that we inevitably tend to look back and wonder as to how we spent the year? Is it because we are so conditioned, that every new year, we often expect a clean break from the past and new beginnings. The ancient Babylonians first celebrated the New Year on January-1st about 4000 years ago and the Greeks and Egyptians used a baby to symbolize the new year. It represented rebirth as we embarked on another journey around our central star - the Sun. In reality, it is anything but magical!

 As we await to transit around the Sun one more time, we need to realize that we live in a vast expanse called the universe and in terms of the relative size, we are no more significant than a speck of dust in a vast desert. 
Any potentially hospitable planet closest to us is probably 17000 light years away in another galaxy. If today if our planet were to meet with a cataclysmic end, it would not make any difference to the existence of the Universe. And yet, here we are - a miraculous existence, a wonderful aberration to the general principle of the universe, thriving in the middle of nowhere on that "speck of dust"!

Over the last 2 years our “wonderful but aberrational” existence has been completely disrupted by an organism that even we cannot see with the naked eye. 6 million people are dead, not to a celestial object crashing into our planet, but to an invisible organism that was possibly created in a petri dish by our own kind. We are being taken down from within - by our own vanity.

Often, I am amused by the facts that life situations can be cliched and cyclical repetitions of past events, especially when it comes to the history of mankind -
About 700 years back, Europe was ravaged by a plague called as ‘The Black Death’. About 25 Million people died from it and it changed Europe forever in many ways. As Europe emerged from it, the population of Europe who had been stunned from their close encounter with death re-evaluated their life as they lived previously and their priorities. The labor force was transformed radically and many of them never returned to their original professions. Agriculture and its related professions took a major hit with lack of labor and turned to non-labor intensive farming and methods. Decrease in Land prices and Increase in Wages was a fallout of the plague. Eventually the plague got less and less virulent and died off.

Now let us compare it with the COVID Pandemic that has been ravaging our world for the better part of 2 years now and like the 'Black Death' it is likely to last for 3-4 years despite the advance in the medical field and mostly due to the overreaction of certain sections of the general population - like a deer gets startled by even a twig breaking in the woods.

Agriculture may not be impacted much like last time because; not as many people died and partially because of mechanized farming has made the industry less labor intensive. But "Global Workplace Analytics" predicts that close to 30% of the Global Workforce will be working from home in the post COVID world and preparing for this eventuality is the best form of Business Continuity Planning for all companies going forward. Then CNBC too came up with a mind boggling statistic that 55% of the US workforce was looking for a change in jobs in the next few months, a phenomenon being termed as - "The Great Resignation"! 

In the past 2 years,  a lot of people had epiphanies about the things that they hold dear to their heart. A pattern emerges here.

The fallout of this pandemic is probably going to be a downsizing of the mega cities and repopulation of the urban & rural countryside and in the process democratization of the development of these areas which have been neglected for long. 

In the long run, over a significantly long period of time, nature has its own way of balancing the equations. 
No, I do not believe in a destiny or a supreme plan that governs our lives and actions - because we are not that significant in terms of the universe and also that human reactions are very predictable, error prone and limited. I do believe that adversities have the ability to effect a course correction for humanity, just like a forest fire replenishes the soil and leads to new shoots and foliage.

Years 2020 & 2021 will be remembered as how close we came to losing our individual liberties. It was shocking to see how fragile the foundations of our freedom were. 

People were divided into categories and guilt tripped for not complying to mass hysteria and paranoia. Businesses destroyed, entrepreneurship crushed, unemployment rewarded, people forcibly confined, violence encouraged, stealing justified,... Any counter argument was shouted down... A pandemic was used to pervert humanity. These were the years when the Government locked you up for your own safety, in response to a pandemic that had a 99% survival rate! This shouldn't go unpunished and every act of infringement on personal liberties ought to be prosecuted.

Someday we will realize as a civilization that without contraries, there is no progression.

Humans were not made for isolation and hopefully in the next year, we will emerge from the obscurity forced upon us by a piece of cloth across our face and a forlorn existence effected by fear. Hopefully then we will finally see the smile on people's faces and not the fear in their eyes. And as Socrates once said - "Let our choices be motivated by reason and the quest for True Happiness". 

Let us make our "aberrational existence" truly wonderful. Cheers To New Beginnings!