A Happy & Prosperous 2023

To wake up to more than a hundred NEW YEAR WISHES from friends and family left me feeling with a sense of forlorn longing - a mood of unfilled emptiness. Not a good feeling to start off a new year. On the bright side, I am happy I still have a feeling or that I am capable of one.

I have a long time back learnt that there comes a time in a man’s life when one realizes that one’s life is no longer in ones control - others and events take control of it and direct it to directions one never intended.

There is no dearth of people who will tell you that no matter what, one is the master of one’s destiny. How fortunate that they have the luxury to speak thus - obviously their lives have been one without loitering - a steady, placid thud on a straight line. Had they tried a detour through the mysterious lanes and by-lanes of life, they would have known and felt the despair of being stranded in the middle of wilderness - at a crossroad to nowhere.

But there is no escaping life - everyone has to live it. How one lives it is a matter of how one interprets the meaning and purpose of life. And how you look at life will determine what you wish for the NEW YEAR.

Mine are as follows:

I wish that I have good health and energy to live a meaningful life;

I wish that life gives me another twelve months at the end of this year,

           so that I am able to make another wish for another 12 months of useful life;

I wish that I continue to have the strength to fight the temptations to do the vile and the immoral;

I wish that I have the wisdom to distinguish between my needs and my wants;

I wish that I do not forget that there are others whose needs are greater than mine;

I wish that I will never for a moment forget that life would be happier if my wishes are simpler and modest;

I wish that I have friends who do not tell me that he/she did not have 10 seconds to write me a line,

           or to wish me HAPPY NEW YEAR;

I wish that I have friends and well wishers who have the sensitivity to personally write out a line, a verse -

           to contribute to the meaning of life, instead of sending me forwards from some unknown people;

I wish that what I do and say will contribute to a progressive Bhutan and contented Bhutanese,

           without whom all my wishes would be meaningless.