Before my very eyes, a year has passed!
At this time last year, I had just woken up with an overwhelming sense of "melancholy anticipation" as my wife and I prepared to turn the page on what has clearly been the most exhilarating chapter of our lives.
Notwithstanding our kind friends who stopped by to help (one of whom just took the day off impromptu in order to help us!), the tasks for the day ahead were as daunting as they were trivial: daunting in terms of the sheer volume of pending work, and yet seeming so trivial in comparison to the enormous leap of faith we were about to take and the uncertainties - of sorts - that lay ahead.
As I look back, I am bemused at the paradoxes that have defined the year - the very things we cherished so much turned out to be the source of our pain: the very friends with whom we forged the strongest bonds were the very cause of our relocation becoming so difficult! The very values, practices and mindsets that gave us our foundation as children and then as adults turned out to be at loggerheads with what lay ahead, as we grappled with a transition that spanned geographies and professions and a transition that had to bridge generation gaps and lifestyle-whitespaces.
Notwithstanding our kind friends who stopped by to help (one of whom just took the day off impromptu in order to help us!), the tasks for the day ahead were as daunting as they were trivial: daunting in terms of the sheer volume of pending work, and yet seeming so trivial in comparison to the enormous leap of faith we were about to take and the uncertainties - of sorts - that lay ahead.
As I look back, I am bemused at the paradoxes that have defined the year - the very things we cherished so much turned out to be the source of our pain: the very friends with whom we forged the strongest bonds were the very cause of our relocation becoming so difficult! The very values, practices and mindsets that gave us our foundation as children and then as adults turned out to be at loggerheads with what lay ahead, as we grappled with a transition that spanned geographies and professions and a transition that had to bridge generation gaps and lifestyle-whitespaces.
As I lay suspended between yesterday and tomorrow, it is perhaps time to stop being fixated on the reflection in the mirror and focus on what lies ahead. It is perhaps time to look "through the looking glass".
