Vishü Rita Krocha
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]nd so, only a few days remain before the year gets over. As always, time gets ahead of you. You still wish there was more time to do all the things you have been planning to do the whole year through. Somehow, you get to the brink of a year’s end and wonder how the days quickly enveloped into weeks and months, and without you noticing, a year is, well, almost gone.
It’s always at the end of something that we sit down to retrospect. Our thoughts, they travel to places we would normally not frequent. Suddenly, the magic of Christmas fills the air, and the songs that never die take over. Then, your mind gets transported to a forgotten place. To a place and time you have always loved. A time in your life when everything about life is beautiful. So beautiful that you would go back if you could.Childhood, when Christmas certainly seemed more magical, more beautiful, and more meaningful. Somehow everything is as it is supposed to be when you are a child. Marvelously, you enjoy every bit of the season as if you perfectly understood everything that Christmas stands for.
But as years roll by and you have grown in your own simple ways, things begin to take a different turn. As the world gets into the festive mood year after year during this time, it brings along a wave of nostalgia. A past that you strangely miss. It is some kind of homesickness that is hard to explain. You just go on wishing…
And by the time Christmas would have gotten over, the year’s event come rushing back. Have I made and kept any resolutions? Have I accomplished the tasks I set out to finish this year? Have I done some good or at least done something that I can be proud of?
No year is perfect. Many things are not how we plan them. We have too many extras in between. And regardless of whether we want these situations, moments or days, they come unannounced and unplanned. And we deal with them. Not because we want to, but because such things are unavoidable.
The year 2014, was for me, many splendid things, but also not short of irreparable sorrow. It might have begun on a high note of hope, but it didn’t necessarily stay hopeful throughout the year. I had big dreams for the year but only few have taken flight. But it’s always like that, isn’t it? Whatever you’d hoped for or dreamt of, are not entirely yours. Some things fall into place, others don’t.
In between, I lost people I love, all in a row. I lost them to death, the cruelest way of saying goodbye. Unforeseen, unexpected, sudden. One by one, they went away. Without much final words, without a proper goodbye. And after they are gone, all you are left with is memories of them- bittersweet! And a sense of brokenness that you can’t even begin to explain. Nothing is the same, again. The pain of their absence stays with you. You never really get over the loss of a person. Over and over again, you grieve. Sometimes, it takes just a song, a movie, a particular food, a certain colour, a phrase, a word. And there you are again, wishing things were different, wishing those people were still alive and here with you.
But in experiencing such things, we continue to grow. We move on. Not leaving behind those people we love, and will always love, but go on living our lives because that’s what we are called to do. To live and to shine our best.
No matter what your story has been this year, or the number of times you have failed when all you have wanted to do is to succeed; no matter what your struggles have been, hard times will always pass. There will be good days and bad days. There will be joy and sorrow. There will be pain and laughter. There will be success and failure. There will be dreams waiting for you to uncover still. Actually, it all brings us back to hope.
It is perhaps only once in a year that we look back in serious retrospection, but it helps that we are looking at the year gone by, and thinking of ways to better ourselves as we usher into a new year. May all our regrets drown with the year’s end and all good things follow us into 2015.
