Spring is back. Nature never misses her promise to renew, and adorn the ground with green leaves and colourful flowers. Tender seedlings discover the warmth of sunshine. Birds sing to find a mate, to make a nest. Then they sing again to tell the world about their chicks. All nature’s creatures are busy organising a new cycle in their life, bees and ants taking the lead.
Our ancestors, those who made their homelands between Kashmir Mountains and the plains of Mesopotamia and beyond, chose the first day of spring as their New Year’s Day, Nowruz. It was a message of hope and harmony in a changing world. Through the centuries Nowruz was codified: symbols of wisdom, thoughts and action were to be presented on a tablecloth; words of confidence and courage were to be exchanged.
But then all human edifices need protection and adjustment if they are not to become moribund in a rigid traditionalism. They need visionary, enthusiastic women and men of action to lead the way for future generations.
We Iranians have forgotten the basic rule of nature: to renew our thoughts, to look into the future and dream about a better life. Our Nowruz has become a duty to perform, 13 days to dawdle bored stiff, blotting out the ugliness and the violence in which our country is in. We buy and consume the symbols of Nowruz, we exchange conventional words and phrases as if we were parrots, no longer paying attention to the meaning. We prepare our children to live in a cage and unconsciously accept the constraints. We have forgotten what freedom is, what action means and what the future is. Looking into the past, we cultivate apathy, fear and foolishness. Wisdom, courage and resolve have left us.
We go against nature, against our own interests, we are political deserters. Nature, while being all sweetness and light with us, is cruel. She rids herself of the burden of deadwood. Today, we are deadwood in a changing world. Let’s use the New Year to think about our future, and the sap needed in our veins for the blooms to metamorphose into sweet fruits. Let’s think loud and act together. Let’s tear open the wicked black shroud of Velayat-e Faqih, if some humanity is still in us.
Happy Nowruz to those willing to ponder on our present condition and ready for change, for those willing to free ourselves from the yoke of the ayatollahs, or of any kind of tyranny.
