Perspectives

As the days to turning a year older near, I go through this phase...this phase of looking inwards and trying to put two and two together. It's a function of me that runs on autopilot and calls for no voluntary effort whatsoever. As the days go past and the clock's ticking gets louder, a part of me starts compiling everything that's ensued over the past year in an attempt to put these pieces of my experiences together into a chapter of sorts. 

It would be cliched if I said the usual about how things have changed and how I've come a long way and blah blah. And I'm not here to do that either. I wasn't even going to fall into the rut of writing this post out until yesterday. I chanced upon this show about the human body on BBC Entertainment yesterday afternoon and was taken in almost immediately, what with my abundant curiosity and awe for the creation that is the human body after all. And it's while I was engrossed in this documentary that I found my inspiration to write this post.

The show, to briefly contextualize what I'm referring to, panned the life-span and the various changes we go through on a daily, monthly and yearly basis - from conception till death. And as the show ensued, I started drawing parallels from the show's script to my own life so far. And here is what I drew; pardon me for getting overly philosophical and existential on this one. 

We always need to have a plan and not having a plan also indicates having a plan. A plan to go forward, stand still, take a few steps back, sit, stand, walk, run, leap, crouch, hide and so on. We all have a path we choose to walk on - sometimes we know where we're headed and sometimes we go blindfolded, treading with the support of our instincts. We have dreams, visions, goals, desires and checklists we like to tick off as we attain each of the above. We meet people we never thought we'd meet, we leave people we never thought we could live without, we take alternate routes, we keep moving. It's rare for someone to not have a game plan at all, if not impossible. 

And as we walk on by, we make changes we sometimes vow never to make thanks to situations or circumstances we're faced with. Sometimes life doesn't turn out just the way we thought it would. But we keep moving. We stay afloat even when the odds of us drowning are stacked against us.

Through it all, we reach. We reach that long-awaited island we were swimming towards or that shoreline whose waves we wanted to dunk ourselves into. We reach nonetheless. And we stop, look around and survey the lengths we went to get to our destination. And it overwhelms us - either because we came a bloody long way or because we barely covered any distance or because of how much we gained/lost along the way. 

This is what happens to me every year. Every single year. I review. I reminisce. I replay. I relive. I revel. And it overwhelms me. It overwhelms me because I outgrow my cocoon, start afresh, keep what matters, throw out any excess and unwanted baggage, work on the mechanics that take me forward and keep moving...every single year. Like I said, we keep moving no matter what, no matter where. It's just a matter of time before we figure things out because

"from your first breath to your last, you become larger than the sum of your parts." 

And with that line, the documentary ends. And my thoughts begin.