It’s a new day, a new week, a new month and a New Year. What a time to be alive. It’s a blessing to have made it this far in life. I would like to use this opportunity to wish everyone a happy New Year and send you good wishes for the year. I hope your hard work yields evergreen fruits this year.

If there is anything that the youth are increasingly becoming aware of, as the years roll by, is that time moves fast, steady but fast. As this New Year is just beginning it seems like there is still a long time to go before we reach the end of the year. But as experience has taught us year after year, 12 months are not as long as they seem on paper.

Many people including the youth make New Year’s resolutions and goals at the beginning of the year. Some are personal and some are professional.  It has almost become a tradition now. While some go on and reach those goals, most of them flop and give up somewhere along the road.

There is something that is becoming more obvious and painstakingly clear in the attitude and mentality of the majority of the youth. That everything worthwhile requires hard work, a whole lot more hard work than what we thought was required. Something our elders have been trying to tell us since we were young.

I am always impressed at how some youth are able to achieve their goals or success in a rather short period of time, it is impressive from the outside. Whenever they are asked how they did it, how they got to where they are, and the answer they give is usually hard work. And that doesn’t really do them justice, it’s an understatement of just how hard they had worked. It’s a lot of hard work.

The fruits of a lot hard work are sweet and the youth and young ones are always drooling over them, yet when they are given the ingredients of that success, like hard work, especially hard work, we turn a blind eye and pretend we didn’t know or a lot of hard work isn’t needed.  

So even though the year has just begun, hard work should ensue because time never stopped for anyone or anything, not even for a year ending or beginning. Let us not start strong and falter towards the end.  Let’s work hard to make our goals and resolutions a reality. 

*Olavi Popyeinawa has a diploma in Alternative Dispute Resolution and is currently studying law, LLB at the University of Namibia (Unam). He will weekly contributing this column on youth mattersInstagram: niceguy_olavi Facebook: Olavi Longfellow Twitter: @OlaviPopyeinawa