The desire for the new is genuine. What we call new is almost always the old in fresh wrapping. The calendar changes; the person does not. A digit shifts from five to six, yet the one who reads it remains imprisoned in the same patterns, the same desires, the same fears. New programmes, new resolutions, new routines; none of it works. We upgrade everything, phones, jobs, partners, cities, and the one who remains untouched by all this upgrading is the one who needed transformation the most.
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Originally published in The Pioneer on 3 jan '26
Another new year has arrived. Fireworks have faded, toasts have been made, and resolutions have been written. And yet, if this were truly a new beginning, why does it feel like a familiar loop with a fresh date? Why does each new year, each new beginning, give a sense of déjà vu? Why does the future reek of nostalgia? The pattern repeats so reliably that one must suspect our very idea of what 'new' means.
Apps spike their downloads, planners sell out, and the same old restlessness changes its wallpaper. The new year arrives like a deft salesman who has been knocking on our doors for centuries. He closed the deal last year. He closed it again this week. The question is not whether he is dishonest, but whether we are ready to see what he cannot sell.
The desire for the new is genuine. We are not content with what is; we yearn for change. But notice how we seek it: through dates, events, external markers. The desire for the new is also the desire to become, to become someone else, to be other than what one is right now. And wherever there is this need to become, there is dependence on time: an unspoken hope that the next moment might deliver what this moment has not. One must ask: if nothing new truly satisfies us, maybe the fault lies not in the objects we seek, but in the seeker herself?
