The search goes on ..

The other day, I finally had to admit that I was growing old - not just physically, but also mentally.Learning new things were not just as easy as it was 10 years ago.My memory and comprehension were weaker that what it was - basically my mind was slowly numbing towards the acceptance that I could no longer  keep up the pretense of being young anymore. There is nothing more liberating than accepting your limitations. Any other day, I would be a sucker for motivational and inspirational speech about how we should challenge ourselves, but today, right now , all I want is to acknowledge that the mental decay has finally set in.

It would be fairly disappointing if I never got to be old to the point that I could in reality or pretend to be senile. I would love to grow old, to be a "has been", to experience the final onslaught of age, to experience all the seasons of life and maybe look forward to the end. Everyday we store some fragments of wisdom from our experiences of life. We learn from our tragedies that life goes on -we learn to differentiate between calamities, and mere inconveniences. The more I interact with seniors, the more I learn that in the end all that matters is how well you have lived your life. The fallacies, the stubborn righteousness of youth, the seemingly age of responsibility in your mature years, the love, the heartbreaks , the health issues, the struggles all are just words in the story of your life. You are that story. That is all there is to life. Love and laughter, worries and stress, tragedies and tears all are not just lessons, but they are part of us. They define us.

I have met some amazing people, people that have touched my heart and changed my perspective about life forever. At the cost of repeating myself again, I want to emphasize that what makes us humans special, are our connections to our fellow humans.   No matter where we live in this world, we all share the emotions, although our thoughts and learned reactions  might differ. Our emotional response to tragedies, to happiness cross all boundaries of race, language and even age. The people who generally have touched my soul, are those who have opened up about real tragedies - and for me, nothing can be more tragic than losing your child, and how in spite of gnawing pain, they still have managed to live and love life.

At times I wonder at my quest in finding meaning to life, this urgency to explore and make some sense as to why we are here. Maybe life is just meant to be lived, to just take it as it is, with no questions asked. Or maybe life is more than that. All I know is, that we were meant to touch other people's hearts, to reach out, to connect  and share. To give and take, to love and be loved. In the meantime, I am still searching for answers, still quizzing about my reason to be here- now.

Trigger happy

There are lives - different lives around the world. Some struggling to make ends meet, some in the developed countries struggling to make human connections. We all have our sets of problems- doesn't matter where we are, we are all looking to find the perfect way to live this life. In our own limited ways, we try to make sense of what entails living a good life.

We all have different wants, have different triggers that make us happy. For some it might be having a successful career, for some, it could be love and family. But for most of us, it is all - we want it all. We are all under the illusion that tomorrow is the day we are going to be happy when we can relax. The problem is that we cannot have it all - at least most of us can't. We need to identify what are the precursors of our happy moods - what is it that we cannot live without. The key is to accept that what might make Ms. X happy will not necessary be the elixir for me. 

Recently someone had talked about how important it was for us to  be aspirational. Why professional success played a key role in our life. I totally agreed with the reasoning, but at the same time I had to admit, that the price that I had to pay for reaching a particular career goal was not something I was I willing to pay. For me,  retirement is important, but at the same time, I feel that we shouldn't postpone our happiness for tomorrow. Retirement implies quitting the present life. I understand that we all need to slow down with age, but quitting work, quitting your present way of life is a definite indicator that you are unhappy with your present situation. 

Life is not perfect, in fact, it is contradictorily ugly and beautiful. As my body ages and my mind starts to slow and in many ways rust, I am still looking for my calling  - something that will warm my old heart and soul.

In the meantime, I keep myself surrounded by people I love, balance need to things to survive with things that will keep me happy. Life is too short to focus on anything  that doesn't give you happiness. Enjoy the day to the best - after all who knows if there is going to be a tomorrow?

New homes

 We all long to belong - belong to someone, belong to a place Then what is that makes a person leave the comfort of his home and seek new pastures? The world  is not as we knew it to be. Globalization means that there are more people seeking out in the new world - the immigrants, the expats - people walking away from the known and familiar in quest of a better world. Home, the familiar sounds, faces,  the food - the laughter, the memories of childhood. Your comfort zone, the place that gives you happiness. It doesn't matter where you go, you might just be changing cities or provinces, or maybe country or continent, the fact is that stepping out is a big part of our growth as human beings.

We all need to look beyond the view from the windows of our houses and step out far beyond the horizons. Travelling as a tourist is different than attempting to recreate the magic of home in unfamiliar places. You can never undo where you  come from. It is integrated in you - it is who you are.

Over a period of time, you attempt to assimilate into a new life, adapting, and learning till you one day realize that you have created another home, new memories and you have been transmutated into something that even you don't recognize.

I find that although I have the advantage of having two homes, two set of values, two set of lifestyles, there is a conflict at times. The values are contradictory and exclusive at times. It doesn't matter where you live, your life is like an incomplete puzzle - a piece or two is always missing, there is always a sense of wanting to grasp a moment or a whiff of fragrance from your past, the elusive sounds of laughter or chirps of  birds, the nostalgia of half-escaped moments.

Every immigrant you meet, will talk about something that they have left behind, some that they are happy to leave behind, and some that they carry with them. Selective memories are deceptive. What we recollect is neither facts nor the truth, but a version of our perception of events contaminated by the passage of time. We learn that with time, at times we accept it, and at others live in a world of imagined perfection.