Of new years and new beginnings

We all look forward to welcoming the New Year, with many hopes to be fulfilled .The year 2021 is also no exception. We were all tired of the previous year which brought despair, fear and death in human life. We were all looking eagerly to find a new way out of it. Some inspiring lines from Tagore came to mind, which made me ponder a little deeper. He wrote, "this incense of mine unless burnt does not yield any fragrance." I thought about it, and realized that the true changes come not with changing time, but by actually burning the incense, which is to say, actualizing our true fragrant potential from within. In changing our state of mind. Real change comes from within, not without and when the urge for change comes - to make life better, we can really do so by using that desire to force changes within our mind. Otherwise our insatiable mind tends to cling to small material comforts that constantly come and go and forgets about bigger duties towards life. This pandemic has surely made us better in many ways. It has been a shared challenge and we are more empathetic to each other now. Also it has made us more family oriented, we have relearnt to share house hold chores happily. Scientists have invented new vaccines. Children learnt to follow online classes quite successfully. Even at the age of 81, I learnt to follow discourses online and give interviews through zoom. These are all very inspiring achievements for all of us. On the whole, adversity has made us more inward looking, alert and creative. We all have stepped in to a new year with challenges, hopes and confidence. Time is like an unending ocean, through which we navigate with our little boat of life. When that little boat collapses with a strong wind, we become one with the ocean and learn to swim. Losing our small identity, we learn to embrace our large identity and accept life as a whole.As Swami Yogananda said, " your fulfillment lies not in obtaining the objects of your desire, but in the unfoldment of your soul qualities and in making the effort to succeed in worthwhile endeavors "