2024 is over. Today is its last day. 2025 is around the corner; or has it already dawned on some countries? Time flies by so fast and will continue until the universe ends, a reality agreed upon by all living beings. Allah (God) decides when the end of the universe comes. Humans have no say in this matter; it is beyond their capacity and knowledge.
For us, tomorrow marks the beginning of 2025. We will flip the calendar over to another year. 2024 is not valid anymore but will be part of history, though. While people will look back on 2024 with gracious or hostile sentiment, they will look forward to 2025 with optimistic and imploring feelings. Nobody knows what the new year will entail, or its ups and downs. That is al-Ghayb, only visible to God.
Will 2024 be as far as 1905? The latter year is when Alberta became a province. 2024 is not distant to this living generation. However, it will be a distant history for generations to come if the existence of the world lingers for a long time. When you think of 1905, what do you feel? You must feel remoteness and a kind of ancient history. 2024 will be like that for some generations.
People have similar needs, despite their different times and generations. They need to eat, they need to get housed, they need to procreate, and they need to have a safe environment if possible. Nonetheless, each generation witnesses a set of unique circumstances and conditions, whether friendly or hostile. Generations that preceded us lived in more hostile and crueler situations than we are today. Poverty was rampant and diseases abounded. Diseases like diabetes and tuberculosis were a death sentence for someone afflicted by them. So, life expectancy was very short compared to nowadays life expectancy.
“Here’s some related information about life expectancy in Canada:
• In 1920–1922, fewer than six out of ten Canadians could expect to live to be 65.
• In 1920–1922, just over one in ten Canadians could expect to live to be 85.
• In 2011, the life expectancy at birth was 81.7 years.
• The most common age at death in 2011 was 85.”
But life was, of course, much cheaper back then. You only needed some cents to buy a five-litre jar of milk, a big loaf of bread, and a kilo of meat. Someone’s entire wages for the whole day were a dollar or a bit more, less than two dollars. Time remains the same but just changes names. It is people that come and go. Try to juxtapose 2024 and 1905, the year Alberta became a province. How many generations are in between? The same sun that rose for the people who lived in 1905 rises for us. Those are the erstwhile generations; we are the present generation, but generations to come will count us as an erstwhile generation. That is the task of time.