The modern world contains but few peoples who possess their own unique and authentic calendars. Along with China, India and Iran, Ethiopia is one of these select few nations.

We have no independence day. This year's pairing of Millennia, first a thousand years of Harar, and this week the beginning of the Third Millennium of the Ethiopian Calendar, serves as a symbolic tryst with destiny that serves this same purpose of reminding us of the span of our history as a nation, and obliging us to renew our collective pledge for the future.
 

Our neighbours in Africa have begun celebrating their half-centuries of independence, celebrations serving as a generational plebiscite on an identity newly-forged. Today, Ethiopia's identity is at once the legacy of not two but three Millennia of statehood, and also this generation's collective commitment to a renewed common identity.
 

What is our common identity?
 

It is marked by twin themes, a double helix of inter-twined and mutually dependent characteristics. We inherit a millennia-old tradition of statehood, a common pan-Ethiopian identity, opposite equally old and vibrant traditions of local particularisms. We possess a history of peaceful ethnic assimilation, but we cannot ignore a history that has also been marked by episodes of violent attempts to impose a uniform national identity.
 

As a foundational home to each of the world's three monotheistic and Hebraic faiths, we enjoy a history of religious tolerance that is an exemplary for the world. That tolerance is intertwined with powerful pride and passion among the adherents of each faith that is the fount of our great civilisation and achievements, including great music, literature, art and architecture.
 

But too few of us can lift our eyes from the immediate and particular and see the wider landscape, our tapestry of interwoven beliefs. We worship the same God but too rarely know each other. Our challenge is to come to know one another without each losing our individuality and place.
 

Each of our religious traditions shares a deep spirituality and readiness to undergo deprivation and adversity for a higher principle. But that same deep attachment to categorical ethics means that Ethiopians must be especially wary of the rising tide of religious fundamentalisms elsewhere in the world.
 

We Ethiopians inhabit both sides of nature's greatest geological rift, and have no difficulty in bridging civilisation-divides that others have defined as irrevocably clashing. Our diversity is a challenge to the historian and the politician. The basic reality is that our Ethiopia is a nation of many faces, and the challenge for our nation is to keep our multiple identities in balance.
 

But this cannot be the static fossilised balance in which every individual is allotted an unchangeable identity: it must be the dynamic balance of a perpetually growing and changing people, reinventing ourselves each generation.
 

We are both hierarchical and rebellious, at once arrogant and humble. We are sensitive to the calculations of power and consider the pursuit of power a legitimate end in itself. We are not so much peaceful as practical in understanding the limits of violence, preferring coexistence to common suicide. When we have taken monolithic philosophies too seriously, several times we have stepped up to the brink of self-annihilation. Coexistence is an imperative not an option.
 

We are a nation of historians, justifiably proud of our civilisational achievements. But too often we also nurse historical slights and offensives, disfiguring the current political arena with vendettas inherited from the past. Too frequently, we are unable to raise our eyes to the whole national horizon and recognise that loyal Ethiopians can legitimately hold different opinions on matters of great importance. This unforgiving quality of our politics may be our greatest handicap in the coming years. We must learn to distinguish dissent from disloyalty.
 

We can be introverted, secretive and conspiratorial, hiding our qualities even from our neighbours and turning away from opportunities for advance. But Ethiopians are also globalised, multi-lingual and entrepreneurial, proud both of our traditions and our adaptability, ready to embrace the challenges of modernity. A new generation of elite Ethiopians is emerging, a new hybrid of our traditions and global culture.
 

Our resilience in the face of adversity is an inestimable quality that cannot be abandoned, because the years ahead will certainly challenge us - in the foreseeable future, climate change and the political convulsions of our near neighbours will undoubtedly call for hard choices. Our creativity and internationalism will equally be assets as globalisation continues to alter the landscape of opportunity. In educating the coming generations of young people, both sets of qualities must be fostered.
 

Our common challenge is to nourish this diversity and balance, which has brought us through the last 2,000 years, and can bring us through the Millennium that we have just entered. We cannot take our peace and unity for granted: each coming generation will need to find a way of enhancing what is positive while managing those traits that could threaten to tear us apart.
 

Ethiopia is a common project. It is a historical legacy that reinvents itself in every generation. Ethiopia is an inherited treasure and a new challenge for us, our children and our grand children. Our myth of thousands of years of continuous statehood is powerful because it has a foundation in fact. In past centuries, our cultural and political elites have dominated the ownership and usage of this myth, reinforcing their power with reference to timeless authority.
 

Today, with rising education and growing intermingling and awareness of our diversity and our position in the world, our identity and destiny are no longer the possessions of a ruling class. Our future in the new Millennium depends on our openness and readiness to engage in a national conversation that involves all our citizens.
 

The new Millennium is the era in which we Ethiopians will draw upon our rich historical legacy and democratically redefine our identity and our future.
 

There is ground for hope but not for certitude. At least it can be said that Ethiopia's destiny lies in the hands of Ethiopians. They might seize it with the vision of a new Ethiopia, with its revitalised pluralism, an Ethiopia that accommodates vast diversities and is yet greater than the sum of its contradictions.