This commentary was published in The Jordan Times on 27/12/2010
2010 will end in less than a week and I am looking forward to new beginnings in 2011.
Most of my hopes - as many people’s - are personal, related to my and my husband’s personal and professional growth, our children’s health and happiness and our family’s and friends’ continued prosperity and positive well-being.
2010 held many rewards, but also some challenges. Many lessons have been learned. We discovered that good effort is often rewarded but also equally resented. We discovered that democratic expression is only accepted in theory, but in reality is denigrated as “bad marketing”. We discovered that success can be earned, but more often has to be bought and bargained for. We discovered that while individuality is celebrated, human beings prefer to move in packs.
We also discovered that the term “we Arabs” should be removed from our dictionary since Arabs and non-Arabs are all human beings with similar faults, qualities and reactions. We concluded that all religious holidays should be celebrated by followers of all faiths, to showcase the importance of spirituality and moral order, and highlight the futility of exclusionism.
We discovered that peace of mind has more to do with the budget available and the creativity in spending it than with any activity of the mind. We discovered that good health is 20 per cent genetics, another 20 per cent hard labour and 60 per cent abstinence from the joys of life. Short-term fun is sinful and long-term fun is contingent on the denial of short-term fun.
On a personal level, I learned that: giving your children their freedom brings them closer to you; a good husband (spouse) is a gift from God; a good accountant can save your business; and an occasional heart to heart with your best friend can maintain your sanity.
From the world of politics and economics, there were some lessons to be learnt as well. Football is not a sport, but a game to test political belonging; social violence is not a fist fight at the end of a party, but a politically void expression of mass anger; appointment to the head of a Cabinet ministry is a life-long economic perk; elections are a privilege and not a right; a vote of no confidence translates into political suicide; use of the right to free expression is political suicide; multiparty systems is a political theory from a foreign book of paradigms; tomato shortages are a business opportunity; women’s causes are bartered for political gains; the peace process is a pseudo name for an agreement to delay resolution; diplomats stay diplomatic as long as they are getting their way and political opposition is just another way to say political bankruptcy.
Gullible human beings that we are though, we have a list of high expectations for the year 2011. We hope that: those who resent criticism are able to be challenged by it rather than angered by its motives; peace advocates finally drop the process and begin the progress; political order is allowed to replace violent and angry expression; newspapers become a forum for free voices and not propaganda; a smaller number of people ascend to the post of Cabinet minister this coming year; Parliament and government partner in their service of the people; women are reinstated as citizens equal to men; children are taught to dream, aspire and achieve, and that we all learn to criticise less and appreciate more, and before anyone else says it, starting with me.
Happy New Year!
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