As I was looking for something to write about the new year, one particular thing struck my attention while I was in a traffic stop, driving back from my breakfast just now: a signboard of a very small shop on the side of the road.

PD MAKMUR JAYA ACCU
Menyediakan berbagai macam accu
Bisa diantar dan pasang gratis
(in English: providing all sorts of battery, we could deliver and install free of charge)

Ask any business owner, particularly the first timers, what were they thinking when they saw that board installed above their small shop entrance for the very first time.

Somebody who just installed their signboard will definitely take a step back, and while still smelling the newly fresh paint on the walls, took a good look at the board and began to say to his heart:

“Am I going to make it?”
“We will definitely make it!”
“Can I pay back my loans?”
“Lord help us all.”
“I have to succeed.”
“I cannot fail.”
“I hope this is a good year.”
“I’m scared.”
“Bring ’em ON!”

And if you care about your future enough, regardless of you being a business owner or not, these things must have been spoken in your heart also. Some of us are expectant of the coming year, others are afraid. Some can’t wait to start, some is just… meh… so-so…

But let me, at the very end of this year, ask you to imagine that business owner, let’s call him John, standing in the sun, gazing at the freshly screwed signboard from across the street, and try to wonder what he was thinking:

A fresh start. A clean slate. A fruitful future. A venture that will make it through the hard times. A place with employees that love coming to work. A business that will rock the world. Big expectations. Huge expectations.

And also, hope.

And a willingness to fight the good fight.

Without hope and a fighting spirit, John wouldn’t order his signboard. He wouldn’t stay there watching the thing got pulled by a crane and make sure it is centered. He would not wait until they finished installing the lights to make sure everything is all right.

Behind every signboard that you see, be it of a noodle shop or a bookstore or an auto workshop, there’s a John there. There’s so many meaning and story to that piece of board.

I call us to remember the signboards in 2011.

Let’s have hope, and fight a good fight throughout the coming year.

Happy New Year!
Edward