I usually write this annual reflection weeks before it’s my birthday. This year, it’s the night before, I just got home from Christmas dinner with the team, tipsy from the espresso martini, bloated from the tiramisu, missing my mom. Life has been very different this year, as anyone can attest. I remember drafting something earlier this year to commemorate life amid this global pandemic, but now sitting here, I doubt that I would ever finish it.
Because certain things are a little bit too painful to write about right now. And if I have learned anything this year, that would be to flow. Resisting, or forcing, would result in greater suffering. Something painful like this should not be amplified unnecessarily. It can be managed through the active management of thoughts.
This year, I realise the extent to which I have been taking so many things in my life for granted. I had always thought that I had been appreciating all the privileges that I had been afforded to in this life and this year, I get to obtain a new level of gratitude. I am incredibly thankful that my parents are fine. I am incredibly thankful that the rest of my family are fine. I am incredibly thankful that despite the challenges that I am overcoming in my life, I am mostly fine.
This year, I reach a new level of appreciation of the wonderful people in my life. The people whom I call my friends who are capable of a deep connection with a willingness to work hard for it. The people whose kindness are elevating. The people who are inspiring by simply being. The people around whom I can simply be.
It is quite ironic that the things that I thought I had been searching for have always been here all along. These things that I thought were a little bit too farfetched are actually quite … real and realistic. Like these things are actually possible. Perhaps I am not as jaded as I thought I was. Perhaps, I have softened. Perhaps, I was blind, but now I can see.
It is almost indulgent to even be sitting here and writing this right now. Because all that I can think about, or rather, what I have trained myself to think about, is this: boy, I got lucky. I got lucky in every sense of the word. I got so lucky that I can’t even begin to describe how, what, why and man, I got lucky.
But I got lucky. And for some reason I am yet to comprehend, everything works in my favour. I am humbled and incredibly grateful.
