New beginning: Given an opportunity all of us would like to make a new start. We make new resolutions to lose weight, stop smoking, save money or use time more profitably only to find that we fail to keep them. There is a saying that today is the first day of the rest of your life. Resolve to make each day the beginning of a new year, a new morning, a new adventure.

History records show that New Year resolutions came to be made first by Babylonians nearly 4,000 years ago. For them the starting of the new planting cycle marked the New Year. They would party for 11 days with each day devoted to a theme. One of the most common resolutions of theirs was to return borrowed farm equipment and pay off old debts.

What, in general terms, should be some of our resolutions? Or what are the important values or principles that should govern our lives in the New Year? Like those Babylonians it is a good idea to pay off debts and return borrowed items. Here is a good scriptural injunction to live by: “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowmen has fulfilled the law.”

Let the coming year find us more loving and considerate towards others. Most religions lay emphasis on love for fellow being and love for God. “Life without love is a disaster,” wrote Paul E Billheimer, a German theologian. “The person who has made the most spectacular success but reaches life’s end without learning love has totally failed. Do not envy those in the limelight of publicity, those with scintillating intellects, or those who have accumulated great wealth and all that it affords. If one has not learnt love in the process, his life is a disaster. Life is for learning love, not for sensual pleasure, nor for accumulating riches, nor fame; not for building great manufacturing, commercial or military empires, nor political power.”

J Krishnamurti, the philosopher who renounced the headship of Theosophical society sometime ago, and gave up any claim to being a messiah put it succinctly: “"If you have no love--do what you will, go after all the gods on earth, do all the social activities, try to reform the poor, enter politics, write books, write poems--you are a dead human being. Without love your problems will increase, multiply endlessly. And with love, do what you will, there is no risk, there is no conflict. Then love is the essence of virtue." Mother Teresa used top remind us that the world is facing a famine of love. To be empowered for the New Year is to fill our hearts with love for God and fellow beings.

Another quality that will stand us in good stead is our determination to resist all temptations to succeed by hook or crook. The great Abraham Lincoln always maintained: “I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.” The inclination to go along with the crowd and the unwillingness to take a stand cause many of our social evils to remain unchecked.

A thankful spirit is a mark of virtue. Our life’s present ease owes a lot to the efforts of millions of others; life in society calls for cooperative endeavour with each contributing in some way to make life ‘livable’ every day—we are obliged to the farmer, the trader, the launderer, doctor, the policemen and the labour of many others. Gratitude is at the root of all virtues. Above all we need to be grateful to God from whom all good things flow. Life is His most precious gift. Then we need to be grateful for all our friends, for our families and for the opportunities and joys of relationships.

Most people believe in a God who is the author of all things we see. “All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen” wrote Emerson. It is again a common belief, matched by experience of millions, that a firm faith in God helps one to meet all challenges and to live life meaningfully. Carl Jung, a widely experienced psychiatrist, had affirmed that among all his patients in the second half of life, “there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.”

Likewise contentment should mark our lives not only the coming year but for all times. Counting the blessings should be made into a habit if we are not to yield to troubles of the moment. Taken as a whole life is a precious gift and it does not consist in the abundance of a man’s possessions. A contented man is never poor; the discontented is never rich.

Life is made up of time and those who waste time is actually wasting life. The fading of the past year and the dawn of the New Year must alert us to the importance of living every moment. Since life is short, we must determine to “redeem the time.” Wasted opportunities seldom return. “Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it—No idleness; no laziness; no procrastination –never put off till tomorrow what you can do today,’’ Chesterfield wrote to his son. That is good advice for us too.

If you couldn’t keep any of your good resolutions for the New Year for a time, begin with a new determination on these lines: “Every day is a new birth in time holding out new beginnings, new possibilities, new achievements. The ages have witnessed the stars in their orbits, but this day hath no age witnessed. It heralds a new life, a new order, a new society, a new age. It holds out new hopes, new opportunities to all men. In it you can become a new man, a new women…”.

Our experiences of the past year must have been a mixed one. Just remember: many lost their dear ones, many homes and precious property were washed away by tidal waves. Added to natural calamities is man’s own inhumanity to man. Pain and sorrow in some form or the other keep visiting millions. What kind of a philosophy should we adopt to live in such a world. St Francis of Assissi , a 13th century friar, gave apt expression to these attitudes in the form of a prayer: “Lord! Make me an instrument of Thy peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love, where there is injury, pardon, where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy…”