Retracing Steps

Five years is a long time to be away. So much has happened in the intervening years. The work, the house, the city, the people around, and the weather, all are different. As is the perspective towards life. I began this blog a decade ago, and looking back, I can identify the crossroads I was at then, contemplating on the meaning of everything that I had taken for granted so far in life.

Ten years hence, the questions stay the same, but the urgency of finding answers has quietened somewhat. Some dearly held beliefs have been challenged by circumstance, while some revelations have come about without much effort, through ordinary everyday experiences.

There was a time, when the desire was to look for the extraordinary, the different, and the novel and even actively reach out for unique experiences. Over the years, I have come to appreciate the beauty in an ordinary, even humdrum life. The realization that one takes so many things one possesses for granted, has made me cultivate an attitude of gratefulness.

If there is one lingering lesson, it is the understanding that nothing is static. We are in a state of constant flux, and renewal and rejuvenation is simultaneous to growth. Over time, one has to leave many things behind, be it places, possessions, or ideas and sometimes even deeply held ideologies and beliefs. And that each new day is going to be unique, like no other that has been lived before.