HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Let the New Year open new doors for opportunities, happiness and love for every one.

Happiness is what matters. Whether it is between two persons, family, among the communities or nations, happiness is something that really matters. Yes, while we talk of happiness, we have never lived by the principle of happiness and co-existence.

This is not the thing to talk about on this day. Yet we do need to talk about it.

For too long, we have been fighting each other. Bombing each other’ villages. Killing each other. Coveting what the other country owns through political and other means. Why should big countries make all the money and leave us behind?

Who are they to dictate those terms by which we have to live by? We are also the equal inheritors of this earth.

The third world always had the worst of everything. The so-called modern world today never realised that the Asians or other third countries were even worth giving a second thought to. And they have said so. With Copenhagen.

What do they know about a small country struggling to survive? What do they care if the streams in the mountains dry up because of the carbon emission or a lake bursts g its dam? Why should they care if some island nations go under the sea? The point is, does any one really look into what is really important?

It’s all relative. If it affects me, I should be concerned, if not why should I be? Simple logic? Some one is spewing more carbon and why shouldn’t I? And that’s where the problem begins.

No matter how big an issue it is, it will ever be considered as one. It is how you present it and who listens. That is another story.

More important is that fact that democracy has brought our people together.

The monarchy, after having consolidated the kingdom for the last hundred years, have finally handed over the management to the people. Isn’t it time that we should take it with a sense of pride and responsibility being bestowed from above, not as just a right by birth.

Like we always pay our respects to our elders, we should also learn to pay for what we have been bestowed on.

His Majesty, the King Jigme Khesar has been at the helm of the state affairs for the last two years. He had been taking the burden of the nation because he cares. Shouldn’t we also make a small start by taking part in it. Now the question is HOW?

There are lots. The only problem is we don’t know where to look and how to go about it. But LOOK is the catchword.

We don’t have to look afar. Every time we come out with project, we think of a donor agency.

Similarly, every time we want to chew a doma or smoke a cigarette, think how much that would help our country and of course ourselves.

Most of all, we don’t have to shamelessly extend our social service begging bowl.

These are something we Bhutanese can do ourselves. But we never do.

We, in Thimpu, watch on TV, Sherubtse or other graduates come and clean our streams once in while. We have never even thanked them properly.

We have to learn whom to thank for what we are today.

That’s the resolution that Bhutanese should make on this day.