It is this time of the year again.
When the market becomes very busy and the traffic becomes very congested. When the people whose culture also celebrate the first day of the lunar calendar year become busy preparing for celebration.
That’s right. Some called it Chinese New Year, Vietnamese New Year. But I think the most accurate wording is Lunar New Year (農曆新年).
This is a time when family and friends visit and greet each other in the hope of rekindling relationship and welcoming a new start for the year. Once-a-year meet-up usually takes place on this occasion, before we part and carry on with our busy work or study life again.
This is also the time when this and that feng-shui masters appear in TV and online shows to talk about their latest publication about your fortune for the year.
They talk in a very fascinating way: “If you are this or that Chinese zodiac, you’ll be earning big bucks this year; if you are this or that Chinese zodiac, you’ll have a tough time this year. No problem though, you can pray at this time facing what direction to improve your fortune this year.”
Wow. They are talking as if they know everything. And they do claim that, because they claimed to have calculated the positions of some stars in the universe. Simply because this and that stars are coming near this time, career of the people of this and that Chinese zodiac are going to boom or doom. So you are encouraged to pray at this auspicious time facing a certain direction to improve your luck.
Wait a second. Did they also calculate billions and billions of stars or planets ‘out there’? Oops, sorry, your question will never be entertained.
And their theories couldn’t explain why all of a sudden starting in late 2019, or early 2020, the fate of seven billion people across the globe is slowly walking into a dark tunnel that drags on for as long as two years, if not longer. And out of the blue, why did Omicron appear and more and more people are recovering after a brief cold? Is that related to stars’ positions as well?
Apparently, none of those whatever masters can answer this question.
Apparently, only science is able to provide an answer.
And more apparently, we—our knowledge, thoughts, action and habit—control our own destiny.
You can’t handle unworldly fascination, when the humanly world matters are still a big mess. And we need to wake up and smell the coffee to carry on living another productive or relaxing day.
We move forward in life with a small progress, a small step each day.