Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Enter The Year of the Rat


On January the 1st 2008 in the backseat of a friends car en-route to Lilongwe after some crazy new year celebrations in Blantyre I experienced a feeling I haven't felt in a long time. I call these feelings my Milestones and they normally presage some major life-change for me. I remember having one around April in my final year of primary school and nothing could have been truer. Major changes happened in my family life and living conditions and I was forced to develop a strong resilience to change.

The most striking of these sensations however came in 1998/1999. Strange date I know but there is a reason. It was at the stroke of midnight and I was standing in the little stretch between the Kenya-Tanzania border at Namanga known as 'No-mans Land'. It was eerily quiet with just the occasional static of the guards radios and a few drunken shouts disturbing the calm. The atmosphere around me felt charged and even as I was embarking on a journey into the great unknown the following morning a tremendous resolve to see myself through crystallised within me then and has seen me through since. Truth be told, the feeling I talk of here has never been an epiphany, rather a slowly growing realisation that creeps up on you through your subconscious then suddenly resolves into sharp focus.

Change is a part of life and never easy, only inevitable. One learns to embrace it when it can no longer be postponed. You're never really ready for it and sometimes wonder how on earth you got through it.

I stand at those crossroads now. It's never any one decision to make but a fascinating web of intricately woven threads that each affect the other and yet make these decisions you must.

According to the Chinese, it a a year of the Rat, auspicious to them as the Rat is considered a courageous and enterprising person.
In numerology as well 2008 bears a lot of portent as it can be read as a 10 or as a 1 from the sum of its parts.

I'm not into astrology or anything, I just generally like being well informed, particularly in a year that I know will be tremendously formative for me as a person and for the rest of my life.

As events take shape I pray for the Wisdom to make the right choices.

To all who see this take time to be introspective, insofar as is possible realise who, what, when and why you are as that knowledge will guide you through the year.

All the very best, here's to a happy and prosperous 2008!