A decade later

It has taken me over 15 years to begin writing after a self-imposed hiatus. During this time, I thought I was strategically planning and managing my career while also navigating my marriage and launching a family (human and non-human), while in reality all I was doing was letting life take over the reins. And like most middle-aged women, there came a point in life that showed me the dreaded mirror, imploring me to reflect and reassess the priorities of my life. Do I have my head on straight? Where do I go from here? Something as simple as considering my family’s health and happiness as priority #1 took a lot of time to adjust to. 

But I am getting ahead of myself. For, nothing I think or do has any impact on the world - it became so obvious during the pandemic in an in-your-face kind of way that it got me down a rabbit hole on exploring the effect I have on this world, or even my own life. Clearly, what my priorities are, how I go about executing them and how I can manage my life effectively and efficiently, have nothing to do with what will actually (and eventually) happen. There is just too many “I”s there and frankly, gives the illusion of control over the happenings in one’s life.

Let me explain, imagine a leaf floating in the air. This leaf thinks it can control where it will land, or whether it will land dark side up or light side up (and any other parameter the leaf thinks is important in its flight and subsequent life). So it uses all its energy and focus on “navigating” the wind. What it doesn’t realise is that it is utterly at the mercy of the wind - so it can try as hard as it wants, but the wind will have the final say. But surely, as human beings we aren’t as helpless as the leaf is against the wind? We do have choices that we make - consciously and unconsciously - and it is these choices that become the path our lives take. 

But what happens if we just let fate make these choices for us? 

Well, I don’t know all the answers but I am not sure the outcomes would be vastly different whether we put our hearts and souls into our jobs versus if we just winged it. For now, I have to rush to my Yoga class. My health, for one, happens to be something I can actually do something about.