As we bid goodbye to 2023, it is imperative that we look back to the events that brushed a picture on the canvas of our lives and will continue to do so in 2024. It is said that the amateur watches the show while the expert analyses the technique. Henry David Thoreau, the American thinker, says, "If there was one life skill everyone on the planet needed, it was the ability to think with critical objectivity." Critical thought is vital to every aspect of our life. Analysing events and projecting them based on the collected evidence would help us build a better future.

Human disposition would be hard-pressed to be critical of anything that does not benefit itself. It would be doubly so were it to prove a challenge. This mentality is employed by the unsavoury elements who wish to upend order and fish in the ensuing chaos. And what we encountered in the past year is the very same. The disjointed events would elicit a prompt "Elementary, my dear Watson" from any Sherlock who would care to glance over.

Does that mean we must become masters of another craft well suited for such analysis, when we are already struggling with one? Hardly so. It would, however, be in our best interests to keep ourselves abreast of happenings around us.

Our great nation will again partake in a vast and convoluted exercise that we call the parliamentary elections this year. We must conscientise the people around us of the perils of letting religion and communalism take over our prefrontal cortex. The current regime is trying to win over a population that they left derelict in the maws of unemployment and hunger with the promise of a kingdom that the citizens don't realise is for them to construct.

We may put our faith in those who promise to stand up for us, but how far can they assure us that they will win and are not fragmented into ephemeral wisps due to their greed for power. It is not easy to promise these things, but that is where the charm of democracy is. We are endowed with the capacity to question and oppose the actions of those in power. This power can be effortlessly suppressed when we only passively consider what is spoon-fed to us or through fear.

If the shameful events of the last year are anything to go by, the future looks dismal. At the very least, the impunity with which our "leaders" are accelerating their plans is disconcerting. The precepts we believe will sustain us are thrown out the window while we remain mute spectators. Most will ask, quite legitimately, I say, what could we have done? Indeed, nothing could have been done with ease. But when an opportunity arose, did anyone rise up to the challenge? I am looking at you who, after tut-tutting the wrongs that were committed, fell into the embrace of power, whether due to compulsion or voluntarily.

Many fall into the temptation of an easy life without struggles. But as Jesus would counter, "narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life." Through passivity, we might hypnotise ourselves into thinking we will escape the disaster coming our way, but for how long? The day the nightmare will catch up with us won't be far, despite our best efforts to convince ourselves that nothing that happens to others can touch us.

It is time that we woke up, looked back and heard the stories from a bleak past that whisper of a bleaker tomorrow lest we heed them.

Wish you all an enlightened new year ahead!