Head or Tail?

Probably my most personal post till now. I talk about my life in this. Although I do not intend to go into specifics of names and events, I want to try and understand what I have learnt over the past one year. I have tried my best to analyse it and yet I just cannot make head or tail of the past one year.

It was a frigid day in January 2010 when I arrived at Boston Logan International Airport with the temperature being -13 C, to board my flight back home to India. I remember thinking that after I got back to India, at least I wouldn't have to deal with this weather. Little did I know, that the heat that I had missed in the four years prior to that would replace the cold as the one thing that I would really hate.

I hate the heat but that has been the most mundane of things that I have experienced in the past one year. It has been an extraordinarily weird year and I have done and experienced things that I would have never thought I would do or experience. And, it was not just in one or two aspects of my life but in all spheres; be it friendship, family or even professionally.

The variegated events have made me depressed, they have shocked me, surprised me, excited me and have made me rethink my life. They have forced me do a complete turn-about on decisions that I had, at a time, believed to be the best. I don't expect my decisions to be always work out the way I think they should but it is extremely unnerving to find that nothing that I had planned was working out.

When I think about the positives in the last one year, I can think of the wonderful new people I met, I made many new friends, I reconnected with my old friends and I embarked upon new journeys. I am not sure whether these new journeys will lead me anywhere worthwhile but I know that I will never know if I just sit idle.

But overall, it has been a challenging year for me. It has defined and redefined several things. It redefined my character. It has redefined my friendships with some. It has redefined the way I think about life and myself. Most importantly, it has defined that no matter what you have done it finally comes down to luck. I am certain many will disagree with this, but I have the experiences of not just me but my friends also backing me. I do not blame you if you believe that hard work and perseverance will always be the formula for success. I used to believe that completely. I do not disregard the value of these, but I also strongly believe now, that most of the time it is also the matter of 'being in the right place at the right time'.

I have had conversations with my friends and we have tried to make sense of life, in terms of where we are and where we are going. Invariably, we have always come to the conclusion that we will get our lives sorted out soon.

The phoenix rises from its ashes. I believe the last year was where my plumage was most beautiful, now reduced to ashes. But now I rise from it, an ugly bird biding my time until I attain my full glory. This is a metaphor that also implies that I will burn again, but I am ready for it.