31 Dec 2021- Awaiting The Wonder Year

Another 365 days have passed us by. How much we have travelled. Perhaps very little outside our safe spaces but so many giant, restless steps in the space of our mind’s universe. If there is one thing that the pandemic years have taught , it is about today, it is about respecting nature, and it's about giving gratitude.

It is also about sitting on the edge of your chair, it is about fear and yet not letting go, it's about the tragic satire of a deadly handshake or warm hug and the seemingly cowardly safety of four walls. But it must be done and so it was. We learn to put one step carefully after the other, we learn to walk with both caution and with courage. All the lessons we taught ourselves, the big promise about seizing the fire, flying to the sun and grabbing the stars remain wrapped in gentle tissue paper, put gently in to a duffel bag with murmured promises of revisiting, of never letting these dreams go. And then we shook out our muddled heads, went to wash our hands, sprayed sanitizer and put on our masks. My inner voice tells me : We must leave the dentist’s office sometime, we cannot live in this permanent dread.

But all of us stayed.

And life went on. In the daily routine of the last years, in the effort to manage a genuine new normal, the effort to stay sane, in leveraging all the good in your heart, and to remember that this too will pass, this too will pass. Sometimes to worry about just how comfortable one got, how well one coped managing difficult times. Should we have? Who were these strange virtual phantoms we had become? And how come it felt just fine?

To understand that we all make the best of what we have - that we turned out selflessly but we also turned in selfishly to survive, that we found reserves of goodness and wanting to help that we never suspected. We found out that we were human, that we were both cowards and we were brave: indomitable ants that tried to trudge ahead in some parallel universe in quiet single file. We learned not to mess with nature, to respect the universe a little more, to understand the Domino's effect of pulling out one single card and the fact that we could love and live together and still be miles apart. But sometimes I did not know which piece of my sterilised world would scatter its evil at me, and on the other hand felt warmth of every single cell and every piece of my heart seizing the moment. It is a moment that could be all the life I have left. Or there could be another. And what a simple joy that was.

The next year will come. We stand on the cusp of today, of the year’s end, a little nervous , a tad superstitious of daring to peek over the wall towards a mysterious 2022 or presuming to wonder what lies ahead. Hoping that like all years, we will be given one of the most coveted gifts - ordinariness, contentment and calm - all that we yearned for in the pandemic years. We need to know that while we can never predict, rarely manoeuvre, this time around we have been forged by fire and we are prepared for anything. We have discovered great fear and great courage in the most weirdly cosmic balance and we keep walking. May 2022 be year of great moments, of wonderful things, of joy, of excitement and anticipation, of breathlessness and peace, system and hope -always always hope.

May 2022 bring us the firm ground we need, for the choices that should be ours, the goodness only the universe can give, pay homage to the love we dismissed and took for granted, accept the tenuous joys that will fall in our laps, and give credit to all that has been and for all that will be.

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Interesting Quotes on New Years

"We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives...not looking for flaws, but for potential.” Ellen Goodman

"Life's not about expecting, hoping and wishing, it's about doing, being and becoming." Mike Dooley

"As long as I am breathing, in my eyes, I am just beginning." Criss Jami

“Last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice.” TS Eliot

“Every single year, we’re a different person. I don’t think we’re the same person all of our lives.” Steven Spielberg

Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one." Brad Paisley