Here is 2005. With all its hopes and possibilities, it is standing before you. Whether 2004 has been a blessed year, just ok or even a bad year, you cannot do anything about it now. No matter what your plans were, what your wishes were, it is finished for ever. You can simply remember its glorious or painful moments. The only reality is the New Year 2005 which is offering you another chance to try again and make your dream come true.

<B>Time</B>

It is quite clear that 2005 has 12 months or 52 weeks or 365 days?plenty of time for you to do what you have in mind. In any case, life is made of time only. Everyone who is born must die one day. Whoever you are, you are not eternal. This is an inescapable fact of life. How many years you have yet to live on earth can be counted roughly. If you are young, you can certainly hope to have more time than one who is older but the end is sure to come.

Even if you are among the richest persons, the most competent and reliable of a group or organisation, you cannot claim to have more time: you have only 24 hours in a day. Do what you like, alas, you cannot buy time so as to have more of it with all the money you possess.

You are thus entitled to a 24 hour day. Your time management has to be carefully and wisely done so that all your important activities are included ? daily work, leisure, family/social life, rest, etc? Does it look difficult? It should not. ?Carpe Diem? ? enjoy the day ? by making the most of it just as bees suck juice out of flowers. Rudyard Kipling wrote most forcefully, ?If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds? worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that?s in it,

And ? which is more ? you?ll be a Man, my son!?

<B>AIM</B>

What you are aspiring to achieve in 2005 has to be well-defined. Your limitations, strengths and other points both positive and negative have to be examined in all details before starting off. Care should be taken not to depart or drift from your planned course of action. Any delay at any stage will cost you time which will be lost without your being able to catch it up. Your aim should be distinct and even sacred. There should be constancy of purpose. Our elders state that if one doesn?t know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.

<B>Set-Backs</B>

However, it is to be admitted that the way is not always smooth at the start. Difficulties and the problems, of which the world is full, can arise to stop you from moving ahead. These should be accepted as tests to see how strong you are, whether you can face and surmount them. Thinkers have repeatedly said that success goes to those who dare and act and not to cowards.

Age, frequent challenges, disease, stress, unrest and handicaps of various forms will continue to come in your way to depress you and even pull you down; yet, in no way should you give up. When one?s desire to succeed is intense, it gets fulfilled.

Looking around, you will come across or see people who are much less fortunate than you in many ways but prefer to ?strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.? Better still, many of them have made history. Being unable to walk properly, Pope Jean Paul II was once asked why was he did not retire. To the utter amazement of all present, he replied that he worked with his mind and not with his feet.

<B>Ahead</B>

To make a success of your life, you have to learn to look ahead. Victor Hugo was straightforward when he wrote that if God had intended man to go backwards, He would have given him eyes in the back of his head. No matter who you are, what you are doing or where you come from, you can always do something to be in a better position. It has been said that the only corner of the universe you can for sure improve is your own self.

Instead of sighing and sinking in burning shame and torturing regret, you have before you the whole of 2005 to rise beyond the expectations of all. It has come with all sorts of opportunities for you. You simply have to make the right decisions and take action without stopping until you achieve your goal.

<B>A fresh Start</B>

Who knows ? perhaps the New Year 2005 has come with a unique chance, the chance of a life-time for you. Sit down and think for some minutes alone to make a plan of the fresh start you are making. Here you may need some courage and determination which will come on their own once you are in action. It is seen that the world hates idlers and mere onlookers but admires performers and high-flyers. Just keep in mind what Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavadgita ??One should lift oneself by one?s efforts and should not degrade oneself; for one?s own self is one?s friend and one?s own self is one?s enemy.?

Take some time to go over these words and off you go. At the end of the road lies your destination.

<B>by Kaviraj SOHUR</B>