2020: Taking Stock!

Short of a month and a half later, we will be saying eager goodbyes to 2020 which has been a different year to say the least. A year that has shown the collective how vulnerable we are, despite our claims of being the most advanced species! If we thought our tribe was invincible, we just faced and continue to face a rude reminder of our limitations. Yet, the benign Universe gives us yet another chance to think more clearly and look at the larger picture. We can still stop disaster from wiping us clean off the surface of the Earth! With so many people having lost their jobs or earning nothing or pittance; with their livelihoods being threatened, it is time that we as a collective, down to the last man, understand the havoc we have been wreaking on this planet and mend our ways.

This year has been a wonderful year for me and perhaps those wired like me who needed a lull in their lives to be able to go deep within to find answers. Not that I am not going bonkers like everybody else or that I didn’t face the lockdown woes and continue fighting little battles on a daily basis, it’s just that if I detach myself from my current situation and observe my life this past year, it hasn’t been all that bad and I am grateful for it or at least for this mindset!

I stepped into the 22^nd year of our married life and turned forty-six in the first month of this year and out of nowhere came this crazy urge to buy myself tarot cards and learn to read them. Eleven months later, I am still crazy about this world of magic that I have begun to see myself as non-muggle, for all the Harry Potter fans out there!!

I began deep meditation in February after completing my Inner Engineering course with Sadhguru’s Isha foundation and I haven’t missed a single day since and this has altered my way of seeing things and experiencing things in a big way. It is what stabilizes me during the difficult mood swings of the perimenopausal stage I find myself in (of course, my husband can’t tell the difference!).

March saw my daughter finish her tenth-grade board exams and my son coming back home at the same time from his college even as everything else came to a grinding halt with the lockdown. Joey was the happiest to have the whole family home! So much attention and so much noise! My happiness matched Joey’s for a week or so after which the burden of excess work without the domestic help began to take its toll on me. That happy face turned into a grumpy face often. The back, the knees, the feet, the head, the shoulders, the arms - all started taking turns at telling me that they exist and I was having a hard time practicing gratitude for their existence but I have managed to pull through!

Credits: pbday.com

April and May saw us adept with our cleaning, sanitizing and mask rituals (we still follow it but it is second nature now). Not stepping out of the house, no drives, worse, no Swiggy, no takeaways, realizing how much people hoard and finding numerous ideas to write a blog. Netflix entered our lives and three out of five of us were hooked on to it. Joey and I, were happy “vibing” without it! The kids had vacations from April to June. My daughter had a change of school during this time and its November and we haven’t been able to find a uniform yet!!

Come June and my husband had to leave home for his last month of work with the IAF, after a glorious 25 and a half years of commissioned service. An emotional last month passed rather quickly for him and he was back to live a civilian life and looking like a fish out of water! His dutiful wife had piles of work lined up for him so that he wouldn’t feel jobless. A few ticks still remain in wait!! (Devilish Grin!!) The pandemic has kept him without a job since the lockdown was announced a few days prior to his job interview! Meanwhile, June saw me begin a YouTube channel with great trepidation and for a person who doesn’t enjoy talking to an audience, it was odd that this was the path I was called to take. I am not uncomfortable in front of an audience and I have been an MC on numerous occasions but I do not revel in it. I manage to articulate decently though on my channel I do hem and haw a lot! Learning to record a video, edit it and post it was a big deal for me and I thank my son and daughter for being patient with me. Opening various bank accounts and means of transactions electronically was another step towards the tarot journey which I learnt this year even though the moolah is yet to come in!!

July saw Joey turn one and Ma opening her doors and her heart for our furry baby and we went for our first full family outing. Joey was on his best behaviour too and now that visit is a comfy and much looked forward to affair for us! This month also saw the domestic help returning. Yippeee!! Gratitude increases multifold and even her half-baked job fills my eyes with happy tears!! To add to the happiness, kids (and they might disown me for this) began online classes which finally saw some discipline coming back into our household. For the grand finale, Swiggy and Zomato started delivering food again! Bless them!

August is a month of celebrations in our family as we have an overload of Leos and even though the celebrations were low key, it was mostly a happy month.

Before I proceed, I want to add that April to July, in fact till date, has been very spiritual for me. I have been doing a lot of inner child healing and shadow work. I have been allowing my vulnerable side to emerge (not sure my family wanted to see this side!!), I have been facing my deepest, darkest fears and I have been brutally honest with my emotions and feelings. So often, we brush our feelings under the carpet because we feel overwhelmed just at the thought of letting the dam of our emotions open. It has been a year of great learning and the learning has been and continues to be about what my reality is. I know I have a long way to go but I do have a few answers.

Again, August brought with it some events which brought with it a lot of inner turmoil in my life. I do not know whether I have made peace with it completely. When people dear to you wage war against one another and they are all dear to you, what do you do? If as an observer you see things for what they are but cannot convey the same, for emotions are running high, what do you do? We are all on our own journey and we have our own lessons to learn but when you have only a handful of deep connections and when they threaten to fall apart, it can be devastating. And yet, life moves on as it is meant to and you learn that going with the flow is the only way to find your peace. The Universe has its ways and all will be fine in the end.

September and October have seen me enjoying my walks and learning about birds in detail. Concocting little stories around birds is so much fun! We are aware of different strokes in swimming but have you seen different styles of flying? Birds have different styles depending on their sizes and shapes! The wagtail is fun to watch and the hawk is so majestic! October saw festivals making their presence felt from Navratri to Dussehra to Milad-ul-Nabi to Samhain or Halloween on the 31^st!

Credits: centrewatch.com

Mid November has seen a grand Diwali renewing our energy and the happiness quotient along with a lining of sinful sweets in our happy stomachs and cholesterol lining places we don’t want to think of! It was also a reminder that humans remain as dumb as they can get and will not abstain from bursting crackers insanely despite a high court ruling against it, despite exceptional levels of pollution and despite the social distancing. Will we ever learn? This crazy “it won’t happen to me” syndrome will bring us to our doom. Most don’t wear a mask and majority of the ones that do, use it as a chin cover, their noses and mouths fully out!! And no, I wouldn’t want to end the blog on that note!

We have a month and a half to learn new things, begin our fitness progammes- that way, we won’t get bogged down with New Year resolutions because we are already on the road to our dreams, work on our projects, hobbies and everything that brings the brightest smiles on our faces. Let us be the best versions of ourselves without stressing ourselves too much (I might just post this blog happily and throw a fit when I leave the room for the smallest of reasons but that’s what makes us human! We do need to embrace our dark side and love ourselves for it working on it with love and not with anger- yes, even those of us who have anger issues have to coax it out of our system with love-if Bruce Banner could integrate himself with Hulk, what’s stopping us?!!!)

I would love to hear what you have learnt over this unique year that 2020 has been . My top three would be patience, acceptance and most of all, gratitude for everything including YOU, my dear readers!