The ride

A life well lived often hides behind it many years of hard work. A significant downside of an outcome-driven world is that there is scant attention given towards the interim. This year, for me, is an interim that has already lasted nine months of hard work. What is daunting is that the probability of many more such months to come is a very real. Yet, in trying to do what needs to be done, what shines through bright and clear is that what matters most, more than the thoughts and feelings, is the doing.

If you know a million ways to hide and hide using those million ways, it is not just you who hides from life then; life hides from you too. That hiding continues to be a real challenge for me as nothing gets done when you hide. Thus, it has been a constant peeling and cleansing of sorts in everything this year — work, life, relationships — there was to be no stone left unturned. The idea was to do the best that can be done, and to keep the deflections and digressions to a minimum.

It has been a heady ride so far. It is amazing when it works well, but it can also be devastating when all of it does not come together very well, as it is often prone to do. If I were to say it is all constant, light and peaceful, I’d be lying. Much like an ocean, it can be serene and calm a lot of times and during others it can be a case of violent turmoil where the fears and doubts lash at you like waves that desire nothing else but to pull you under one last time.

In all of this one thing that keeps coming back at me is that only awareness that matters is that you have a choice, always, be it even in death. The awareness of that choice has always existed within me, but mostly a facet of my life when it was easy to live by it. Trying to be aware of that choice at all points in life and to live owning up to your actions as your own and none else’s has been an entirely different kettle of fish. When it is hard, the temptation to run and hide is so overpowering.

Yet, the awareness remains that this interim is the passage to the outcome that is desired and in that outcome there is nothing else but more of the same awareness, but one that has no struggle in it. In effect, there is nothing that you gain from all of this other than to be granted a view of the world and yourself that is shorn of the million tints that you give it. There are people. The people hold various kinds of energies in them. The world is an outcome of what all those people do with their energies.

And the first step towards desiring a better world is to desire and live a better me. What I tell myself is that if I genuinely desire and feel for it, then there should be no excuses and there should only be thoughts as to how to take those steps to living as a better person. And that is exactly what the interim has been and why that interim will go on for a lot longer before this stage ends.