Ever New, Ever Fresh!

New year! So they say, and I really wonder if any particular day can be called new! What about the other 364 days of the year? Do the days become old as they pass? In short, every day is new and every hour is new, and every minute is new. In fact, for the discerning hearts, every moment comes with decked in new attire, new attitude. It all depends on how we look at reality. Think of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who said that every drop of water running through the river is new, though we might think that the water is the same, and that is what made this philosopher say that we do not get into the same river twice. Just as every moment that dawns sinks into past and future is made into present, and though we may think that we have moments ever new, ever present, but we don’t realize that every moment is born anew, eternity is sliced for us into fragments, and every moment is forever new, forever fresh. But the moot question is, do we ever realize the beauty of this newness all around us.

I sometimes do a simple exercise to make my senses look at reality with new senses. I go to a vast expanse, and stand in a particular place, close my eyes for a while, and then open them wide… awaken all my senses, sense of smell, hearing, seeing, tasting and feeling, as if I am in an altogether new situation. I turn even the familiar trees, plants, objects into new; gently forcing my senses to believe that I am seeing them, hearing them, feeling them for the first time. Often my senses so get used to reality around me that I fail to take note of things, even when they bear newness with them. I go close to the flower plants, and look at them carefully, and try to find something new which I had not taken note of earlier. Sure enough, often I come across many new elements in the most familiar surroundings.

Our senses do not wish to acknowledge that we are presented with new reality every moment, and it is demanding for the senses to adjust themselves according to the new realities, and so they wish to retain the old memories, and pretend as if there is nothing new in the reality. It is only when we take things for granted that we get used to things, we get fed up of them, we take things for granted. Often we hear people make excuses saying, Oh, I thought it was the same old thing, and therefore I didn’t take note of the changes. Reality all around us is ever new, and we need to focus our attention to find the newness; it is easy to forget the newness and indulge in the ever old, so that we cannot find vitality and newness in all that we do.

It is not only the external reality which is full of newness, but every human being too is ever new. Scientists have found that there are hundreds of body cells get replaced each day, so much so after a few years, we have a brand new body, with brand new body cells, all of them having been replaced in the preceding months. Therefore the skin, bones, even the nail get new cells, and most of the time we do not even realize that we have a new body. All that we take for granted is that we have the same old body which we had inherited at child birth, and we had grown in size, but have maintained the same elements. So also everything is changed in the universe at every moment; the stars and planets keep changing their places, and there are ever new developments in the universe that we cannot even predict what would happen the very next day. It is not that they are left to the fate of chances, but there is newness all around.

The whole universe is charged with newness, and though many of the realities surrounding us seem to bear the monotony of mundane reality, they all have the potentiality to be new and remain ever fresh, and it is time that we open our minds to recognize that newness all around us. Today I would like to pause for a while and recollect to my mind all the persons I met and events I participated in, and try to find out the new elements I had failed to take note of. Reality cannot remain monotonous, because remaining unchanging or monotonous may be the death-knell of any kind of reality. As one of my old professors used to say, change is the only thing that does not change, and every change brings in newness. It is this newness which makes life worth living, and makes life all the more meaningful. I know when I meet my partner in the morning, I will know that she is a new person, and that when I see my boss in the office the next day, and if I tell myself that I am going to meet a new person, life may become quite adventurous and exciting. Let me start looking at reality with new eyes each day, each hour, each minute, and each second, and my life cannot remain the same again!