If I had that one wish for New Year that could come true… What would it be?

I would have to use it wisely, make sure that I covered all bases, that I didn’t waste it on something short-lived and narrow. And the only thing I could think of was that somehow this New Year could bring us all together from wherever we are, whoever we are and whatever we believe in.

I am acutely conscious of the fact that the sort of world unity I wish for lost its allure a long time ago when recession hit us all hard and made us look for someone to blame. And the preachers of hate swooped in to point fingers at strangers and stranded travellers. They made us build walls and regroup to the higher ground of a crystal mountain where they told us to hide from the hordes: the dispossessed, the alien, the others.

This Christmas my suspicions were confirmed that there are no others. We are one and the same people. Every Christmas the four households within our tiny Church enclave come together for a chat and a mince pie. This Christmas, it was my turn to host the party. At first sight, you’d think that there couldn’t be a more homogeneous group of people: all white, middle age, well-educated and fairly comfortable, quite creative and bohemian, a couple of youngsters between us to pass onto the baton of the bright future. And yet.

As we shared our past experiences, it transpired that we had lived all around the globe: Cyprus, Germany, Lebanon, Poland, Malta, Bermuda, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. Each of those places had once been a home to some of us, but it did not detract in the least from us sharing our tiny Church enclave and living here in perfect harmony. Some of us had once upon a time experienced the fate of a refugees: from the clutches of communism during the Cold War, from the mayhem of Beirut, from Eastern Berlin before the Wall fell, from Cyprus during the Turkish invasion. Some of us had to run, leave everything behind and rebuild our lives from scratch.

We are all white, middle-age and comfortable, but we have had our share of realism and we hold a stake in our global common humanity. We are no different from today’s Syrians. We are no better – we are just at a different point in life and in history. We have no guarantees that one day we may not be forced to seek refuge in, say, Iran. It happened in the past – why couldn’t it happen again? We’ll never finish that wall between them and us – it’ a mad man’s delusion. It’s like building a wall between your heart’s left and right atrium and allowing no flow of blood – no flow of life – between them.

So yes, my wish for this New Year of 2019 is that we stop fanning divisions and we start building bridges and hold hands with those who need their hands held.

Happy New Year to you all, my fellow citizens of the world!