Beryl Menezes

Spring Holidays Resurrection Life. Easter means different things to different people. While Lent gives you a chance to look into your soul, Easter heralds new promises for the year ahead and freedom from memories that are now a past. According to certain calendars, April symbolizes spring; when all creation is born again and there is a new hope.
For students, it is the end of academic stress and freedom to enjoy the long summer months. For graduates, it is the end of a phase in their lives, and freedom to begin other one. For those turning adults, Easter opens up diverse opportunities to go out to socialize, to pursue their passion, to find their feet in the world as young adults. For teachers and parents, it is a time to impart new values to their young ones. For the retired and elderly, Easter brings nostalgia and with it also a renewed sense of confidence to live days ahead, armed with a certain satisfaction in seeing the youngsters around them reach dizzying heights of success – a fitting tribute to their long-life struggles.
An egg hatches, A rabbit emerges. Mass is celebrated. People are charged. There is a new awakening. A religion is reborn, refreshed. Then come the Sunday struggles, for crucial choices between being pious and attending Mass or catching up on much-needed sleep at home. Comes Monday, the new week starts with the daily rigmarole springing into rewind mode. Stress and tension abound. The only real break are festivals that provide a freedom from the monotonous routine. Easter heralds celebration.
For Christians, it is a celebration after forty days of abstinence. People are bedecked in new raiment, and exchange nicest, cards, greeting, gifts. Special goodies are prepared. Parties run galore: just another reason for Generation X to swing their hips to jarring popular beats, not as if they needed a reason. The actual message of Christ’s resurrection with its fantastic hope to lost people around the world takes backseat. Just like other festivals, the real reason for the season is forgotten. But does anyone really care?
In a world too fast paced to even read a book, let alone smell a rose, we have no time for spirituality. God is non-existent these days. TV sport is an indulgence and fast food, a way of life. Farming is recreation and blogging is emotional satisfaction, Cell phones are a virus and I-pods are contagious. Surrounded by commercials bombarding us from all direction and jumping at us from every corner, our lives have succumbed to commercial living. Money is our religion; making big bucks are fast, our passion. Technology has won a victory over our basic instincts and we are all victims of these ‘devils in disguise’.
Depression starts early and rehab clinics are flourishing. It is remarkable that instead of living longer with all our latest health fads, our life span is gradually decreasing. We say that science is superior to the creator and if we have, ‘Monkey- Brain’ intelligence, we don’t need anything else. Well, judging from the number of natural and man-made disasters that have rocked this decade, it is clear that the only progress we have made is a colossal wastage of our grey cells, made worse with each passing generation.
Were the most intelligently God’s creation meant to end up being dumb dolls who obediently let other people and gadgets rule our lives? Are we going to just sit there and let situations around us get the better of us?
This Easter, let’s reclaim lives again. Let’s do away with the repugnant habits of techno mania that is slowly destroying our well-being and instead resemble creatures that have an iota of peace of mind. Let’s make a resolution to take time out for ourselves to rationalize where we went wrong. Let’s be receptive to change, but not just go with the flow. It is that time for us to pay the price for lost spirituality in a land symbolic of it; let’s start living our true religion. Cheers! And Happy Easter!