This time of year always fills me with excitement and hope that our journey into a another New Year will bring with it a new era with fresh perception of the future. We celebrate this season in a multitude of ways to keep ourselves feeling positive during the cold, sluggish days and the dark evenings that seem to arrive much too soon. We just want to forget everything that’s difficult around us.
For me, and I hope you too, the brightness and generosity of our festivals and celebrations of light bring along with them a spirit of hopefulness and excitement. We become transformed from our ordinary and sometimes unconscious ways and find ourselves seeking the bright optimism of the Christmas lights. We enjoy sharing and gifting kindness, supporting and caring for others and immersing ourselves in living the values we all aspire to live by.
These are days that give us a chance to appraise and reflect on our actions during the past year and assess our triumphs as well as our misgivings and failings. We reflect on what progress we have made during the past year and think about the opportunities we’ve been given and those we might aim for in the coming months.
This year, in ubu, we have faced change in so many ways; social transformations and political uncertainties, financial restrictions and technological challenges each of which affect the very texture and fabric of our communities. We have begun, at last, to recognise the impact of the environmental crisis we all must face in the near future.
ubu has worked hard, collaborating together as One Team to understand how we can best keep ourselves healthy and well emotionally and physically. During these encounters with change, we have talked and listened to each other and especially to the vulnerable people we enable and care for.
We have discovered that by asking simple, open questions, we can more easily and efficiently find solutions to complicated issues. By acting on evidence rather than prejudice, in ‘real time’ we can find reasoned resolutions and realistic solutions.
We learned that our own partialities and biases restrict and disable our ability to hear what other people are saying and asking from us. When we communicate clearly, not only with each other but most importantly with those we support, we can help them achieve the successes they might only have dreamed of in the past.
ubu consists of a highly valued and committed group of extraordinary individuals. Our objectives, philosophy and values are more timely now than ever before. We insist on standing up with the people we support and care for because together, as One Team, it is our duty and honour to teach and enable those we work for and with.
By actively listening to each other’s needs, hearing concerns and anxieties, championing understanding and thoughtfulness, acting on feedback we’re given, and consulting with others appropriately for advice and expertise, we can ensure we are delivering respect, honesty, clarity and dignity at all times.
In achieving these simple but incredibly powerful goals, we have prepared for a more agile and adaptive approach to the challenges of change we all have to face in the future. Our role is always, even when no one seems to be looking, to enable and ensure that we are each of us, appreciated, respected and acknowledged, a recognition deserved by everyone as a basic right of our Human family.
I wish you and your family and friends a very happy, fulfilling and generous Christmas and festive celebrations. Sincerely hoping that the New Year will bring us all clarity, stability and renewed vigour to achieve being the very best we can.
