Welcome, New Year.
Can I call you that?- New Year? I mean, every time the Earth finishes its timely orbiting, a new year begins, which is technically not a new year after two weeks have elapsed and after another round of orbit, it is the new year, yet again. So, let’s stick with 2022, then.
Time really goes on. Before writing you this letter, I was redirected to my email on Yahoo! and 2022 marks that it was over a decade ago when I was obsessed with the Yahoo Messenger. I landed on my contact list to find numerous people, whom I knew back then, virtually and currently do not even remember nine tenths of them; remaining are friends on Whatsapp/ Instagram/ etc — on-demand online, you see!
Can you be the Santa, whom I can tell what I want this year and you can be the generous soul who showers me presents of good health, love, joy, challenges and gratitude wherever I go? Can we even dwell in this wishful thinking where daily whereabouts are increasingly more uncertain than ever? Or is this that it is indeed this wishful thinking that bolsters hope of a good year ahead?
I think it is the choice between glass half full or empty. Doesn’t it all come back to beliving in our beliefs?
You see, 2021 was a hurdle yet a great year! It began with my boyfriend and I getting engaged. Then preparing for an April wedding in times of Covid-19 second wave in INDIA! Managing emotional drama till the D-day, only to have it postponed — just brushing over the emotional trauma that both the families had to endure. And let’s not even talk about the hopes that were crushed of having a fesive wedding, only to pick ourselves back together and prepare for a smeltering hot wedding in June, which was indeed blessed with a rainy, pleasant and tad bit of humid day! We finally got married — our closest of families and friends blessing us. We got married!
Then we traveled. lLocally!
And soon enough we knew we were relocating to another country. WHAT!! And so began the emotional and physical preparation for the move. We made it through 2021!!
And here we are, in ̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶e̶w̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶ 2022. I am sitting in LA. I can see mountains at the horizon, buildings before that, more like a concrete jungle shining under the sun. Looking good! While, here and back in India, we are all facing another wave of Covid-19. Who would have thought! It has been exciting, it is scary. It doesn’t matter where we are, we are worried about our families, their health and well being. The new ache of not being there has found its way through.
And with this new ache. I hope, I can only hope, that we make it through 2022. That courage, brevity, patience, love and resilience can also find its way through along with the new ache. That good health and joy shines through all kinds of times. And that if there’s something that 2021 has taught us, and we shall take it with us in 2022, it is the Will to make things happen.
-Cheer
