I know it is only numbers – the first day of the first month in the new year, 2009 – but that is how we organise things on this planet and we might as well go with it.
So Happy New Year everyone.
Hang on, one minute, do I mean that? Happiness to rich people, poor people, healthy people, ill people, terrified people, terrorists, battered people, batterers, bombed people, bombers, rape victims, rapists, psychopaths, murderers, and all those who live in fear and destitution throughout the World and the many politicians, dictators and democrats, who do nothing to stop human suffering.
It is a tough one that.
But I do wish them happiness….all of them.
Happiness and hope.
I do not believe that terrorists, murderers, psychopaths, rapists and so on, are really happy. If they were, naive though I may sound, then just maybe, they would not be commiting those acts from which all decent people recoil.
Too often they are the outcasts from the smug high table of society. The angry and resentful young men and women who might have been turned to the lightness of being, if more people had really wished them happiness.
So Happy New Year, Robert Mugabe. May your conscience finally tell you to resign…may you find happiness in repentance and joy in those who would then survive in a country you have devasted.
Happy New Year, al-Qaeda. May you finally see the tragedy and brutality of your ways and find happiness in the absence of hatred, joy in those lives not annihilated by your crimes, and redemption in the survival of your religion without the blemish of your blasphemies.
Happy New Year to all those rich bankers and captains of industry who have previously only found happiness in their own lives. May the credit crunch bring some reality to your careers so that you find happiness in the lives of others, happiness in a sense of fairness, happiness in the freedom of guilt in lives focused too much and for too long on the greed and superficiality of too much personal wealth.
Happy New Year to the politicians. Ehud Olmert, prime minister of Israel, taking your turn in the lime light on that great stage of power and responsibility, may you find happiness in ending slaughter not creating it, may you find joy in a permanent peace between Israel and Palestine and satisfaction in leading by example in a world where too many leaders perpetuate unfairness, suffering and hopelessness.
Happy New Year too, all you rapists, murderers, terrorists, bullies, bigots and thieves. May you find happiness in the happiness of others, joy in a sense of belonging to society, and relief in the realization that your inner hurt can be healed by love and that your crimes only make your pain worse.
And Happy New Year to all those victims of those mentioned above. May happiness reach you against all the odds….you, the raped widows from the Central African Republic, the unfairly imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, the bereaved and wounded in Gaza, Israel and Mumbai, the cholera sufferers in Zimbabwe, the homeless, the abused, the starving and the ill from all round the world, may 2009 break the mould and bring you real happiness.
Happy New Year to everyone….lets make it the year of change and hope.