Nowrooz, new day, a renewal of life, the beginning of spring, an opening to a new year. We celebrate the passing of old days, let bygones be bygones and cherish the cycle of life, embrace the new, a renewed life. With the new year, we remember fondly or in anguish, what has passed, and we surrender to the future. One that is held in tension by the inevitable and what we assume to command. We surrender to the future in the hope of having the privilege to make our mark on it.

At least on this earth we inhabit, there is no more appropriate moment to count a year gone by and welcome a new year than the beginning of Spring, precisely to the second when it arrives and shakes the winter cold from our lives.

I am proud to belong to a culture, a heritage that marks a most valid demarkation of a new year. The most logical to count another earthly cycle completed, free of superstition. Yet I am humbled by the fact that the forces of nature know no culture, nationality or boundary. Nature doesn’t care, it is we who beg for a place as a tiny spec within the vastness of nature by respecting its cycle in celebrating it. Nowrooz does not belong to us, we belong to the cycle of life that started millions of years ago and shall continue, in some form or other, for millions of years to come here or elsewhere in some other universe. What remains, is the stardust that flows freely amongst us, through us and transcends time.

Somehow somewhere some time ago, people living in a certain corner of this earth, noticed our insignificance towards nature. Knowingly or not, they acknowledged the irrelevance of man-made dogma in comparison to the might of nature. (Yes, man-made as I know of no woman who prescribed or was inspired by superstition that blinded, tortured and tormented their fellow human beings in the name of some invisible dictator watching over us from the heavens.) Certain people who lived near a city in which I was born, learned to celebrate nature as it is and how it is. They acknowledged and formalized in the purest way possible, the cycle of life as nature has it. Our ancestors had the innate wisdom to understand the futility of contaminating the cycle of life with man-made, arbitrary impositions on nature. A new year begins with spring despite any short lived dogma invented by mere mortals who lack the courage to acknowledge their own mortality. Nowrooz, such a timeless celebration of the passing of time.

Nowrooz, a new day, the point at which we are to celebrate the cycle of life and our minute place in it. To embrace the future with the momentum of what has passed. To cherish our loved ones with us. To remember loved ones lost to the cycle of life that brings us new life to nurture and pass on the wisdom and love gifted to us by those who were taken from us by that same cycle of life.

What better way to celebrate a new year than when time shakes the freezing past to give way to the warm promise of a future. Let us meditate in the frenzied anticipation of a new year, as the ticking of time reaffirms the inevitability of change and renewal, and remember those who are no longer amongst us, those distraught by misfortune, those who are shackled in prisons, shaken by war and terrorized by dogma.

What better way to celebrate a new year than to warm our hearts with the fond memories of our loved ones lost, compassion for the unfortunate, the promise of freedom for those imprisoned for their courage and peace for those tormented by the unknown.

Let us welcome the new year, one that links us to the nature that nurtures us.
In loving memory of my aunt, a fountain of love in our lives

BP
March 20, 2016