A time for everything

Before anything else, please allow Streetlife to greet all of you a very happy and Prosperous New Year! I do this from the bottom of my heart, even as we all do wish for the best of what the New Year brings and hope that it will be better than the previous one. The realists in us would admit that there are indeed good years and bad years in the course of one's life, if not for the whole world, but that does not deter us from hoping for better times ahead, especially on the "first" day of a new year which we commonly call New Year's Day.

A time for New Year's resolutions, too, though for some time now, I believed this practice is more of a tradition than anything else. But it does make sense to do a reflection and self-assessment on the previous year's accomplishments and failures, and in trying to make new plans and goals for the New Year. Doing this year after year wears off the novelty and enthusiasm, but still it can provide a longer and wider perspective of what one really wants to do in life rather than mechanically doing the mundane activities we do each day.

Time is all we have. From birth to death, we are given a continuous stream of opportunities to make decisions of what we do with life. The world today is the sum total of what all the previous human beings put together, and indeed our technological advancement is so impressive it never ceases to amaze us what civilization has achieved. Yet, when we look around, or watch the news on TV, the same wars and famine and hunger persist, calamities and tragedies occur, and we are still far off from the utopia each generation desires.

Time is continuous but man breaks it up into measures - years, months, … hours and seconds. Then we have the seasons of our lives - birthdays, weddings, graduations, becoming a parent, all the other anniversaries, and the funerals, of course. In all of these moments in time, more so on New Year's Days, humans are drawn to search for existential meaning, and plan for a better year. Always hoping for better things to come.

But what matters is how we use "our" time, and how to discern the "right" time (and of course, the "wrong" time), in whatever we do. Time, or the bits of it, doesn't mean the same to each one of us, and it's up to us to either make good use of it, or waste it. To many, happy-go-lucky, it's crossing the bridge when we get there, while others do plan to the detail, oftentimes getting disappointed when things do not happen as wished for. A quite a few others place their lives on God's will, believing that He has an appointed time for everything.

And indeed He has. "There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven," an old Hebrew king once wrote. "A time to give birth and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal; a time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace and a time to shun embracing. A time to search and a time to give up as lost; a time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear apart and a time to sew together; a time to be silent and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace."