Next half to go!

At two different occasions during a calendar year, I make it unexceptionally important to look back in retrospect. These occasions come across indicative of a new beginning, yet, ironically, they bring an un-equivalently opposite feeling of joy as well as sorrow.

At the first occasion, there is an excitement in anticipation of a new year, and a new hope to see what is in store as the future unveils itself in time. Setting small-term objectives to achieve personal excellence and checking off the list of achievements made over the past course of time, undoubtedly gives a sense of satisfaction and a refreshing spirit to welcome the so called beginning of a new milestone. For some reason, this doesn’t come very personal, not at least to me. Along with zillion other people on the globe, I am happy to see the onset of just another year, which too will soon become history.

There is this other occasion that is personal and to me in particular, comes a little after the second half of the year had begun. Besides coming during the next half of the year, it brings a demanding need of seeking a purpose to the rest half of my life; a poignant reminder of progression towards eternal sleep and a painful review of an unproductive past. Advancing age deeply questions me of the very existence and it’s purpose and of accomplishments worth counting; often accusing me of lack of planning and discipline. I stand guilty, confessing a rather blank record of the list of things I wanted to do before I had lived for a few decades. In the yester years, this was one of those days that was much awaited, with the countdown having started literally months in advance, not even weeks. And today, I am here, trying to make every possible but futile attempt to at least pretend to have forgotten about it! Time just flew past and left behind a very sad realization of the fact that there is so much remaining to do in so little time!

I wonder if these thoughts are subjective to myself alone or if every individual is inescapably subject to them. As a matter of fact, it is humanly impossible to not contemplate life more often than not.

A close friend of mine has a pretty simple yet a scary logic that reduces the remainder of life into a little more than one thousand weeks. Makes sense; the idea of breaking it into functional, dysfunctional, productive and non-productive pieces in time and diminishing to a quantitative four digit whatsoever, does put things into perspective. This presentation of life in a conceivable amount of time dramatically influences one’s perception of life and enforces action towards living life in its totality.

I have been grateful to God and I still am year after year, for adding blessings to the journal of my life but at the same time there is this seemingly intense pressure haunting me day and night about my failures, some of which can never make up at all in a given life time. Those innocent moments of childhood, that hearty smile, that peaceful laughter, that undisturbed sleep which has now been lost into pretentious scenarios of today’s life is never going to come back. At this point, as I look at the ceaselessly ticking clock I once again realize “time and tide wait for none”!