The Year

The year.

Here we go. Let’s do the most obvious post of the year. The end of year reminisce post.

2016. AH.

One word.

VAST.

For the longest time I’ve thought that I belonged to a generation of game changers, a generation that would most likely see a war, see rebels see leaps that no other era of humankind had. And to be honest before 2016, it merely felt like one of those never going to happen movie fantasies.

But damn, did this year really change our lives?

It’s the year I turned 18, a legal adult. I did not expect that I would experience any adult like phases, I just hoped it’d hit me later, like when I’m 25? But weirdly I really feel this year took me for a toss, threw me across the wide field that was teenage and childhood, landing on the other side of the fence, in a stormy dark ocean where I had no idea how to swim. I drowned, I drowned in this adulthood so many times. Sucked into the contemporary world ideas, echoes of the disasters happening in the parts of the world I’d unknowingly ignored all my life haunted my daydreams, the exhaustion of university and competition weighed on my nightmares. And most importantly the loneliness of urban life, an independent student life.

But that was all the rough parts. 2016 gave me love, it gave me new beautiful friendships with people whose greatness I cannot fathom. It made me cherish all the people I’d taken for granted. It made my opinionated aggressive demeanour a wee bit calmer. It made me connect to my spiritual side just a bit, it’s a beginning, I know to something vastly explorable. Philosophy, architecture, history, arts, literature, films, books, music, practicality, a little scepticism, a little optimism and the necessary warn worthy pessimism, just the right amoint and sometimes conflicting combination made me realise how overrated single handed ‘isms’ and ‘opinions’ are.

Confusion. That sums up a lot of my experiences. Travels to far off lands, establishing a connection with cultures I wish I could expose myself more to, meeting strangers with astonishing and sometimes heart breaking tales. The lessons learnt with one bag pack and notebook are irreplaceable.

This year truly felt like growing up, not just the normal-every-year-go-to-out-of-a-novel-growing-up, but this sort of sad yet brutally real experience of growing up. That had so much to do with suddenly understanding how my identity as an individual is part of a much larger holistic system that involves a collective identity that’s controlled by society, by world, by politics, by education, by economy, by family, by the friends I choose and the decisions I make. Just how connected the bigger picture is and how small yet how ambitious a position I hold in this large world, this realisation sometimes dawned on me like a doom, making me anxious and unbearably confused, lost and at times it was necessary.
At the end I think the key is to find balance between all our roles. And that’s something I’ve only begun to understand.

2016 gave us more wars, threats, hatred, trump, demonetization, brexit, deaths, anger and so much destruction. There were days it got difficult to be optimistic, to be hopeful. But it is important to find strength, it is important to not break so much that we become ignorant again, it is important to understand we will have our  time, have our place to heal this world and ourselves. This is the beginning of something, I could feel it in my bones every news update that flashed on my smartphone. Earth with all its beings was shook. And I don’t know what will happen next. I do know that change, the change in eras has begun, and we will be here to witness its beginning, to live through it. We live in a time in this world, the catalytic phase I believe and I hope that the events that have happened so far and the people at power give rise to leaders, to rebels who will take this world to a brighter, peaceful place.

I hope that for myself as an individual too. I’ve had so much taken and given and changed in my life that I cannot understand exactly what made me grow when. I just know that I’m very grateful for 2016, for it gave me values that I could never find, it gave me lessons I could never learn on my own, it gave me storms that I survived. And I’m proud.

I stand taller, I stand more confident, I stand more confused, I stand more humble, a little kinder and tons calmer than I used to be.

2016 was indeed a test run designed by the universe to check if I can survive the future. In 2017 I’m getting my old life back, in a twisted and slow manner but I am nonetheless. It’s going to be so difficult to reset or re-establish my old life the way it was and move on from the life I’ve had this past year, but I’m positive.

There’s one more journey added to my list of self explorations now, to find a balance of my position as an individual and as a world citizen. To find balance with my ambitions and my passions, to find balance in confusion and clarity, balance in mental, physical and emotional well-being, balance between being inert and being rebellious, between necessary aggression and calmness.

To a year, to a time that guides humanity to a better place.

Thank you, whoever is reading for knowing my story. For caring about it. Thank you to everyone who was part of this life changing year.

Happy New Year.