Looking Forward
Once again its time for taking stock and drawing up the balance sheet for the year gone by; and making plans and setting targets for 2009.
Most of us have this queer feeling that seemingly, 2008 just literally flew past. And to be honest, most of us would have no regret on that account, considering the pernicious financial and economic havoc it wreaked in world markets. Many are still licking the wounds and bracing themselves for a belt tightening spell.
On hindsight, the raw and blatant greed; and the proclivity to possess before accumulating the means to procure, have been the obvious cause for the mess we find ourselves in, and this is more so in the western economies. Most people of my age have been brought up in an environment where credit was anathema and to be in debt a disgrace. This has been the philosophy of the east, where greed and avarice was to be eschewed and considered a moral impropriety. But the western world and our own youth, influenced by the western mindset, became too ambitious, which is not bad in itself, but ambition coupled with impatience, is definitely so.
AND WE ARE NOW ALL WITNESS TO THE CONSEQUENCES.
It's time to recall the words of Vermon Howard
“You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.”
The events of 26/11 in Mumbai, in the last quarter of 2008, were another reminder to the world at large about the mindless terror that is being sought to be unleashed by some misguided religious bigots. We have heard enough from sententious leaders and politicians, albeit nothing concrete or of any substances, and I feel it is time that we, the common citizens, have to find our own Panacea.
“Some men see things as they are, and say Why?
I dream things that never were, and say 'Why not'?”
On that note from Bernard Shaw, I conclude with a request to all readers to give us a feedback with their perceptions for action in 2009.
Ranjit Butani