Resolution for 2017: Comprehending the 'Different'

Photo: Kazi Tahsin Agaz Apurbo

As we sign off with 2016, we look forward to 2017, hoping to mend our ways, letting go of bad habits and develop new ones. I bet many of you are still working on your resolutions – lose weight, read more, save more money etc etc! It doesn't matter if half of these resolutions get lost by the 10th day of January – at least making that list, imagining oneself of achieving all those goals and looking forward to starting afresh – keeps you happy! 

I, too, am making my own set of resolutions. In fact, I am doing so while I type. And I have different note books where I write a variety of resolutions according to the categories I had created earlier. For instance, in the little black book, I am writing a list of things to do in office - cleaning my desk, giving away books, throwing 15 or so plastic water bottlers stashed under the table – and so on. In the blue coloured notebook, I plan to list stories and assignments for myself and the team (never too late to work on a Pahela Baishakh story for April 2017!). And of course, within the pages of the yellow spiral, I plan to list down habits that I plan to develop – meditation, exercising, swimming every day, reading more, staying clam – and all the other impossible feats I plan to accomplish, every single year. 

No matter what our personal lists may be – the one thing that we must accomplish in the year 2017, is to practice tolerance and to be more accepting. Clearly, the year 2016 was in some ways moving a step back, rather than moving forward. People have lost their homes and are now struggling to build new homes in foreign lands; racism is out there in the open and the world will now deal with Donald Trump – a world leader of sorts.

However, moving closer to home, one cannot ignore the atrocities that have occurred and occur on a regular basis every year. Starting from rapes, murders, sexual harassments to burning homes of the Hindu and Santal communities – Bangladesh was in the news for all the wrong reasons. 

As we look forward to the year 2017, let's make a promise to work harder to try and comprehend issues that are different, accepting ideas that were never ours and destroying the notion of the 'other'. Only then can we ever dream of becoming global citizens and move forward in the most positive way.