Crossing the threshold into the new year of 2015 I heard something saying …the most important thing we humans have is hope…and I thought how right he is. Our hope is based on the knowledge that our globe keeps turning, that the sun will rise and the night and darkness will be over. The hope that you will reach the goal you have set your mind to. The hope that the medicine will help to take away the pain. The hope that one day you will reach the foot of the rainbow where the legendary treasure is buried for us to find and live happily ever after.

 It was only yesterday, me driving from Nicosia back to Kyrenia, it was raining hard and the mountain range was covered with grey blue thunderous clouds, that all of a sudden I saw a most beautiful rainbow develop, a perfect bow reaching from Agirdağ to Dikmen, and I saw where its feet were planted, so very close, and a light shone there in the rainbow’s colours. But when I approached on the highway, it was like passing through a huge gate, the apparition got weaker and weaker and was finally gone. I smiled. When I reached the other side, descending towards Kyrenia, there it was again in all its brightness over the sea.

Like in true life, we are lured to follow an apparition of which we are told that it is the ‘promised land’, the chest of treasure we are hoping for in order to lead a good life.

Towards the end of each year we can hardly wait for it to finish so we can make a new start, a new beginning in many ways, as if we could leave all the pain, sorrows and waste we have produced behind us and start afresh with everything clean and polished, new and untouched.

After December 21 the days start to be longer again, the times of darkness will soon be over, nature will be reborn in the beautiful season of spring and all wrinkles are smoothed out and the ugly rubbish is covered up.

It is a good habit to make a clear cut once in a while and say, let’s start anew, let’s forget about the past, let’s close one door and open the new one leading to an unknown territory which excites our curiosity, our sense of creativity and adventure, which has some healing effects too.

To make a new start we feel that we ought to be prepared and it is a tradition for us to undertake a long walk on the beach to air our system; this year we really had a strong westerly wind at the Akdeniz Beach with a mighty surf rolling in.

What will the New Year be like? We have made the step across, are looking out to guess what is there to expect in the far distance, and the motor that drives us now is HOPE. We hope for peace and mutual understanding for all parties facing war, despair, poverty and racial hate. We hope for rain in parts of the world suffering from draught, and sunshine for those who freeze. We hope for politicians that have a vision and think of their people instead of their pockets, we don’t want them to use hope as a lubricant; to awaken false hope is a crime against humanity. Hope can in some people’s life be the crutches to keep moving.

Let’s hope to have our daily bread and on and off a glass of wine to celebrate and friends to do that with and we hope to stay realistic and not grab for the stars or wear shoes that are too big for us.

Here is to those who have lost hope, may they find a new road to go. I am thinking of those who have lost their home and country and have become refugees and who have trusted ruthless people to help them escape and have been abandoned in the middle of the sea. They stay alive only because they have some hope left that they will be helped to get out of the trap others have created for them out of greediness.