Walking Each Other Home

It's that time of the year again--the eve of a new one. I left the office early today to do some banking in USJ. Then I decided to linger at the Starbucks nearby to finish off some work. After that, I went for an early vegetarian dinner and set off home.

Now I'm back in the sanctuary of my room to reflect on a year that just passed. It felt like I had worked the entire year without taking a break--which, in essence is quite true. I certainly did not take a holiday and I did not have any boondoggle trips out of the country. As a matter of fact, I did not travel out of the country at all for the entire year.

Overseas travel has become such a commonplace affair these days; everyone talks about their foreign holidays, as if it is another trip to the neighbourhood store. The usual destinations are of course Korea, Thailand and China. Since I did not travel anywhere, let me recall what has been significant to me for the past the year.

These days, I do not yearn for new experiences anymore. What I seek to achieve is to internalize good practices that I've been meaning to put in place. Perhaps the most significant thing for me is to reestablish a blogging habit--at least once a week. This I've been pretty successful in maintaining. Monday is both my vegetarian and blogging day now.

For the past years, I've also treated my work as a kind of 'workout'. It is like going for a walk everyday. Work is simply exercise for the mind. It keeps me mentally sharp. Work need not be such a turn-off if we know how to portion it and not to place too much importance to its outcome. You give your best to each task and move on to the one. The important thing is to continue learning and sharpening one's saw.

On the audiobook front, I think I sat through more hours of lectures than the average undergraduate. 2018 has been a year of history for me--I wanted to give myself a firm foundation on European history. The good thing about knowing history well is that it helps you to put so many other things into perspective. Everything you read suddenly becomes so much clearer.

I've also been meditating on a daily basis. I consider meditation an act of mental hygiene. As physical exercise is to the fitness of the human body, so is the practice meditation to the mind. Work, exercise and meditation are the triple medication I take regularly to maintain my physical and mental health.

As for my relationship with others, I do not aim for grandiose gestures. I only help people I'm close to and within my small sphere of influence. And over the years, these relationships have been both educational and rewarding. It is heartening to see people grow and change for the better.

For the country, 2018 has been a momentous year. A lot of people has expressed disappointment over the performance of the new government. But I beg to differ: I think we have over-achieved. Being an observer of the politics in this country ever since my school days, I know the solution to many of our problems cannot come overnight. Good things take time. But we humans are not known for our patience and perhaps understandably so, for our lifetimes are short.

And with the passing of each year, we become more conscious of our own mortality. Life is fragile. The impact we make in this world, for most of us, is hardly significant. But every one of us is significant in our own ways, in our small spheres of influence: a father, a mother, a friend or simply a helping hand.

Everywhere on social media, you see people's desperate need for attention and acceptance. We are all doing the best we can in the only ways we know. Everyone's path is different and each of us has, outward appearances notwithstanding, our secrets hangups and neuroses.

My wish for the coming year is that we see each other as fellow human beings who are all seeking to understand ourselves better. Let us all be kind to each other, for as Ram Dass so eloquently put it: We are all walking each other home. Happy New Year.