In two days’ time this year will come to its death and a new one will be born. It is not often that the passage from one year to the next brings as much confusion and as much questioning in people’s minds as this year has. The end of this year has brought with it stories of scheming, deceiving, participating in murder, and greed.
People who matter are promising to rectify things; to correct systems that need correcting and to remove people whose interest is not to serve the country. All this coming at the end of the year reminds me of the resolutions for the new year that people used to make in the past. I don’t hear people making any nowadays probably because we believe it is likely that we won’t keep them.
Having touched the subject of new year resolutions that we seem to have forgotten, it would not be a bad idea to think a little about them once again. Resolutions come from taking stock of what’s going on in our life. This demands of us that we stop looking outwards and, instead, look inwards for a while. Somebody once said that a life that is not reflected upon is not worth living. I would say that a life that is not reflected upon is not being lived; it would simply be a collection of activities.
If we do not give ourselves time to try to understand the meaning of our life, what it is that keeps us going, the reasons for which we do things, and to get in touch with our feelings so as to know what they are communicating to us, we would simply be moving with the current. On the contrary, if we examine the personal reasons for our choices we would be standing on firm ground watching the current and deciding which way to go ourselves rather than passively moving with it.
This demands critical thinking of us. Critical thinking was the subject of a debate held recently at the University of Malta. A lot has been said about the lack of it in Malta. I’m afraid that critical thinking is not only lacking in Malta but all over the world.
It is enough to look at the populist movements that are rising in Europe and elsewhere and the success they are having. Shrewd people who have their own agenda find it extremely easy to manipulate crowds simply because in such crowds there is no individuality.
Thinking critically we use our values as a measure for our decisions. Of course, in the first place we have to see whether our values are indeed values. Unfortunately, even in this respect, we might easily succumb to the noise of the crowd proclaiming values that are not values. Our faith tells us that the only truly human values are those of the Gospel because only Jesus Christ was a flawless human person. As long as we do not dedicate time to get in touch with what is truly authentic and valuable in our life, we condemn ourselves to continue living as part of a crowd rather than stand out in it. And we will not be able to make any resolutions, neither for the new year nor for our immediate future. And unlike Alfred Tennyson in his poem ‘In Memoriam’, we will not be able to sing: “Ring out the false, ring in the true”.