2021
Oh, what a year it has been!
Yes, I’m better than I’m before. Yes, I am happier! Have conquered some demons along the way, and I’ve tried every second time after I failed, And I have a clearer vision than the year before.
Seeing a year pass or whatever a human does to mark the passing of time, I cannot relate to it. From my perspective, I believe that time is something we invented to grasp the incomprehensible nature of the universe.
But things like year endings, or birthdays help us to form a baseline, to compare ourselves with where we were last year and where we are now. I believe this is the best thing we can do for ourselves, to reflect on ourselves and think about ourselves. (Nowadays, we don’t have time to think about ourselves, but, on the other hand, we have all the means to think about others).
So, here is my summary of last year, in which I’m going to tell you about some good things that happened in my life last year and some things I’m going to improve upon next year.
This is my way of reflecting. As they say, writing is the slowest form of thought process. Perhaps as I slowly move through this experience, I will relieve those moments, or maybe I will learn something new from things I forgot to consider in the past.
I hope after this reading, you may reflect upon yourself and find what is that you value the most, what you cared about more in these times of pandemic, and how you faced and beat most of the challenges you faced in this meantime.
Here I go…
1)Less Consumption- I consumed some things less this last year, which are toiling on mental health, eating up me. The first one in it is Information. I’m the guy who always thought that the more information I have, the more I will have things to tell. See, as from childhood, I thought that this thing would help me to get the attention of people around me(I didn’t want to live my life in FOMO!). But this year, I had the realization that I don’t have to do that anymore. Because I have some people in my life who care about me, whether I know things or don’t. They did listen to me a lot this year, which is the most caring thing one can do for someone these days. I realized that as I care about more and more things, it’s like not caring at all. I realized this hard way that, for you, nobody cares! Except for some people. It’s true. So that’s the changing point, which made me realize that I have to focus on these selected people as I can’t please everyone(for an introvert like myself it’s like one of the hardest things to grasp).
2)Taking Break- At the start of the second wave in India, I went to ‘mama’s’ place which is like a village in the mountains where nobody can reach me by phone or any other way. Nobody there is judging me or asking questions through subtle ways about what I’m going to do with my life. It’s like an alternate reality for me where I worked a lot, ate a lot, slept a lot, and beat every cousin, even mama’s in every game we played and everyone was happy. I spent 3 months there, where I learned to do and appreciate hard work, mentally I became more peaceful and also started looking at life from a different perspective. I didn’t know the importance of taking a break at any point in life, well I do know now that it is one of the best things I did for myself this year.
3)Failing- Failing, a bad feeling(‘a weakness, especially in a person’s character; a shortcoming’ as per the dictionary). Everyone tries to avoid this uncomfortable feeling. But one thing I learned about it, is that I have to face it and face it with a big smile on my face.
(‘Smile, not because you failed, smile because you tried’ Some random quote which hit me at 1 am some night).
I think we have to make peace with this feeling because as we try to avoid it or try to give some lame excuses to ourselves to run from it, we make that condition worse. I think as a society, we overvalue success and undermine the Importance of failure. Likewise, I created a theory to myself, that everyone lives in his own created world, and in my world for me, it’s okay to fail. Fortunately, I’m privileged enough that I can afford to fail as many times as I want. (The number of times I can try and fail, the higher the probability that I’ll get what I aimed for).
4)Value assigning- As my journey of knowing myself, I understood that if I give value to anything around me, instead of seeking validation through it, I will be happier.
This perspective changed my views on all things. I started doing things I like and not just doing the things I’m good at (sometimes the thing you are good at may not make you happy, and you have to understand that). Challenging your long-held presumptions, some small changes in thought process, things like that can make you believe more in yourself.
Here are some things I would like to improve this year
1)Solo Trips- Given that we only have a limited amount of time on this pale blue dot, I’d like to explore it from top to bottom and from left to right. Getting exposed to different cultures and interacting with different forms of nature will make me a more complete human. Fortunately, I was born in one of the most diverse countries, INDIA. I want to start this by going to the south and then north and east and finally in the west. I don’t want to rush this over to complete it in a year, but I am going to travel to one of the parts of this beautiful country this year for sure. Not only that, but I want to go to these places when there are fewer tourists around. I want to know more about people and the culture of the state I’m visiting rather than just going to popular tourists places there. I’m going to do it my way, cutting everyone off, going slowly from place to place, and not caring at all about what is going to happen in the future, like a nomad. This thing I’m going to do this year certainly, even though I’ve to start with nearby places. (let’s hope that there will be no COVID-19 condition by this year)
2)Creating Wealth- Gaining knowledge is one thing and forming wisdom is another. The same goes for gaining skills and making wealth from it are two different things. As this year will be my first year as an independent individual, I would like to start with good financial habits to create wealth. As I learned, lots of different things about wealth and money and whatnot last year. One important thing I learned is that as a young person in his mid-twenties, I have two important assents (ME and my TIME). On which I can bait on, and I can invest in them early, and I can get huge returns for sure if I do that.
3)Writing blogs- One of the best things about writing is that I have to slow down my thought process and think about it again and again. This thing I will do is to reflect upon my thought process and to create value from the learning I have gained from my everyday experiences. I will try to write at least one blog per month to explain complex things into simpler bites from numerous domains like technology, current events, the universe, and productivity, and lots of more things. This way I’ll know if I understand a particular topic, or I pretend to understand it. I learned this from one of the great physicists, Feynman.
“I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here. I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.”
― Richard P. Feynman
As per Feynman, I don’t care I don’t have all the answers to all the questions, and it is fine. But I know some things with some clarity, and I’d like to share them with everyone.
4)Health- Being in the best fit w.r.t my physique is my aim for this year and coming years also. As these pandemic times pointed it more clearly, health is also a form of wealth, I'd like to accumulate it. I’d try to create s system to make me do at least 30 minutes of activities per day, which I can scale up in time. It is not that much hard for me as I used to exercise, but yes every new beginning is hard and at least I will try to show up every day which is the most important thing at the start.
Yes, This is it! To live by these resolutions, I intend to build on the habits I already have while implementing one new habit at a time.
I hope you find what you dreamed of, care for what you value most in life, and try to love yourself the most.
In the end, I’d like to share with you a beautiful poem I came across this year:
And you wrestled with all those enormous things, heavy things,
things that threaten to shred your skin and bury you alive
yet all those around you, invisible things.
Yet, real things and difficult things.
Don’t you dare diminish that, don’t for a second take away the right.
You have to be proud of surviving the things you never talked about that.
People never saw. You are a warrior, there is magic in your bones.
