25th October 2023, Gangtok/Sikkim, India  -  Wishes 79 / 80 / 81

In the name of Peace and Justice.

I have three wishes today, which I present to you in the name of Peace and Justice - in the hope they may be fulfilled.

And this is my first wish for today: We're all one family, we're all the same, wherever we live, we have the same emotions, the same dreams, the same anxieties, the same worries - and we all have the same wish to live in Peace, in a Paradise on Earth. And at the same time we're all different, everybody has his own identity, every individual, every group of people, every nation.

My wish is that we come together and celebrate this sense of family and individuality.

On my travels around the world, I came across the Hornbill Festival which is celebrated every year in Kohima/Nagaland, East-India. The Nagas are descendants of ancient warrior tribes and headhunters, who one day decided that it's better to make peace instead of fighting each other and chopping off each other's heads. And to celebrate their willing to make peace, they invented an annual festival where representatives from all tribes would gather at one place and show off their special tribal talents in music, dancing, costume, and all sorts of other traditional skills - not in the sense of a competition in any way, but in the sense of merrymaking, of fun and pure enjoyment. And the festival is meant for the Naga people themselves, really, although outsiders are welcome (I think I was the only foreign tourist at the time, apart from an Italian photographer).

My wish is that similar cross-national, multi-cultural festivals, as a declaration of peace, be held worldwide every year, to celebrate our belonging, despite all our different individual peculiarities - not as a competition, but as a celebration of mutual interest, understanding and respect.

Which brings me to my second wish for today: My special wish for today is that, for the occasion of such festivals as just mentioned above, new musical instruments and new music be invented. Instruments that everybody can learn to play, and music that stands for the idea of immense joy, mutual understanding and respect.

And with this, I'm coming to my third wish for today, still in the context of joyful mutual understanding and respect: My wish is that new games be invented, easy games where there are no winners and no losers but where everybody is having a great time, games that draw on the idea of a global awareness, a global togetherness, a global sense of purpose in the name of Peace and Justice. 

Such are my three wishes for today, which I present to you in the name of Peace and Justice, in the hope they may be fulfilled.

In the name of Peace and Justice, thank you!