General Admission
Happiness in the new year
By Al S. Mendoza
WHAT is happy about the new year?
Well, everything new, generally speaking, makes us happy.
A new pair of shoes makes us happy. New clothes. New friends. New beginnings.
The new year makes us new again that’s why we are happy.
In fact, we are so brand new that we feel so blessed.
That is so irreversibly true.
Without God’s grace, without God’s mercy, without God’s love, we’d miss seeing the dawn of the new year.
The new year always brings joy because it means we have successfully overcome the past year.
Every year has its own dose of failures, setbacks and sad encounters.
But by getting past the headaches, it means we are on to a new journey.
Or, is it to merely continue the journey that God has tasked us to embark on?
So that sometimes, it is not the destination but how we travel.
Did we step on another person’s toes in order to get there?
Did we use dirty tricks to reach the top, by hook or by crook?
Or, to be blunt, did we cheat to defeat the foe?
What is glory when achieved at the expense of principle?
What price valor when the result means untold misery to the other side?
Why aim to win when the tradeoff is your soul to the devil?
Is happiness a warm gun as John Lennon sang it?
To assassins, yes it is because they have no conscience, heart.
The soldier who shot Ninoy Aquino to death at the airport tarmac in 1983 has remained in prison.
Why did he do it? For money?
The John Lennon fan who shot John Lennon dead in 1980 has remained in prison.
Why did Mark David Chapman kill John Lennon?
No, not for money.
He was too obsessed, so in love with John Lennon, that he considered only death to his idol can make him gain his “freedom.”
He did not resist arrest.
When cornered by police, Chapman was clutching the book, “Catcher in The Rye,” which dealt with insanity.
Still, even convicts deserve to receive the greeting, “Happy New Year.”
That is in keeping with God’s undisputed love to both the bad and the good so that he allows sunshine to be enjoyed by both the bad and the good.
In the same vein—I said this before but I’ll say it again anyways if only for emphasis—the rain doesn’t only fall on the good but on the bad as well, on flowers and on weeds as well.
You met someone you hated in 2013 on your way to office today and you didn’t greet him, “Happy New Year?”
Not right. Un-Christian. Unholy.
The guy maybe bad or good, or even ugly, but still, extend the greeting.
It’d even be best if, after you greet the one you love to hate in 2013, you shake his hand as well.
Better yet, give him a bear hug.
By doing that, the “happy” in the “Happy New Year” will ricochet back to you.
Ah, uplifting to the spirit. Heart-warming.
Happy New Year!
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