Monday Musings: New Years and wavering minds!
I have vacillated quite a bit on the subject of ‘new years’. My views have swung wide and sometimes ironically.
In the early years I would treat new years as time for unadulterated celebration – nothing more and nothing less. Youth needs a reason for revelry and even a flimsy one as a New Year was enough. It had the pretence of the monumental – everyone wanted to believe that something big and something significant has happened or about to happen as the Roman calendar turned another page. No one knew what exactly. It was a mass mobilisation of the absurd that had alcohol as an alibi. I did not complain even once. No one else was complaining either.
As years went by I started to take the New Year’s very seriously. I wrote some extremely self conscious pieces of new years that passionately exhorted the cause of the pause, self reflection and course correction – in that order. A lot of fuss was made of that giant chasm between the end of a time and the beginning of another. I believed stuck between these two was a giant opportunity for renewal and reimagination. I believed in the possibility of that moment. I wrote obituaries of the year gone by and the offered a toast welcoming the new one drunk with optimism.
As I look back on those moments during the new years I am almost embarrassed by my naivety – the embarrassing gullibility of believing that I could change, make new beginnings, close lose ends, wipe memories, erase anguish and pain, build confidence to reimagine myself, forgive and forget – all as easily as the time changed its year on the calendar. The fact remains that I did spend many New Year’s actually believing all of this was possible and particularly so as the New Year dawned.
I am in the third phase now. I am less and less sure of almost everything that I held sacred once. I am not confused – I am just less sure. I am scared of certitudes. More than that I find certitudes spurious and the ones who are absolutely sure as charlatans. Every year exposes me to myself a little bit more. It is almost as if another layer of innocence (best case scenario) or pretence (worst case scenario) has been peeled off.
So what did 2018 made me more and more conscious off? What has another year of living taught me about living? Here are my top 5 of them.
1. Everyone is dealing with their own demons. Everyone is scared and pained – in small measure or large.
2. People crave for empathy & care more than development and progress. (Corporate learning and development folks take note!)
3. It takes just one second, one event, and one thing to change the tide – Don’t take yourself, your fortunes, position and even knowledge/abilities too seriously.
4. It just takes one second to drop dead – so chill and don’t fret. As they say – ‘you are not coming out of this world alive’
5. Not everything happens for a reason – so don’t search for one. However having a theory about why things happened to us comforts us – so do create one.
By the way..wish you all a very happy new year 2019.
What is your top 5?
Guru
www.gurucharangandhi.com || www.mondaymusingsbyguru.blogspot.com
I have vacillated quite a bit on the subject of ‘new years’. My views have swung wide and sometimes ironically.
In the early years I would treat new years as time for unadulterated celebration – nothing more and nothing less. Youth needs a reason for revelry and even a flimsy one as a New Year was enough. It had the pretence of the monumental – everyone wanted to believe that something big and something significant has happened or about to happen as the Roman calendar turned another page. No one knew what exactly. It was a mass mobilisation of the absurd that had alcohol as an alibi. I did not complain even once. No one else was complaining either.
As years went by I started to take the New Year’s very seriously. I wrote some extremely self conscious pieces of new years that passionately exhorted the cause of the pause, self reflection and course correction – in that order. A lot of fuss was made of that giant chasm between the end of a time and the beginning of another. I believed stuck between these two was a giant opportunity for renewal and reimagination. I believed in the possibility of that moment. I wrote obituaries of the year gone by and the offered a toast welcoming the new one drunk with optimism.
As I look back on those moments during the new years I am almost embarrassed by my naivety – the embarrassing gullibility of believing that I could change, make new beginnings, close lose ends, wipe memories, erase anguish and pain, build confidence to reimagine myself, forgive and forget – all as easily as the time changed its year on the calendar. The fact remains that I did spend many New Year’s actually believing all of this was possible and particularly so as the New Year dawned.
I am in the third phase now. I am less and less sure of almost everything that I held sacred once. I am not confused – I am just less sure. I am scared of certitudes. More than that I find certitudes spurious and the ones who are absolutely sure as charlatans. Every year exposes me to myself a little bit more. It is almost as if another layer of innocence (best case scenario) or pretence (worst case scenario) has been peeled off.
So what did 2018 made me more and more conscious off? What has another year of living taught me about living? Here are my top 5 of them.
1. Everyone is dealing with their own demons. Everyone is scared and pained – in small measure or large.
2. People crave for empathy & care more than development and progress. (Corporate learning and development folks take note!)
3. It takes just one second, one event, and one thing to change the tide – Don’t take yourself, your fortunes, position and even knowledge/abilities too seriously.
4. It just takes one second to drop dead – so chill and don’t fret. As they say – ‘you are not coming out of this world alive’
5. Not everything happens for a reason – so don’t search for one. However having a theory about why things happened to us comforts us – so do create one.
By the way..wish you all a very happy new year 2019.
What is your top 5?
Guru
www.gurucharangandhi.com || www.mondaymusingsbyguru.blogspot.com
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