Look Back To Look Ahead

Sometimes to look ahead you need to look back.

Days leading up to one's birthday are usually full of anxiety and introspection -- anxiety of another year passing by, introspection about all the years that have passed thus. One usually thinks of what all he could have achieved but he did not, reviews the choices he has made and decisions he has taken. Wonders if a different set of choices would have made him/her a different person than what he/she is today.

In the last few days I had been introspecting too, and was in parts anxious about growing older without having achieved much, especially as compared to all the people who had started with me but went much ahead when I chose to stay at home five years ago. 

Then a couple of nights ago, while looking up something, I came across an old note. It was written during a training session 8 years ago on the behest of the trainer -- who happened to be my husband too -- while in a workshop. We were supposed to write tribute statements for ourselves for our 85th birthday (assuming we were alive), things that people would say about us. I read what I wrote about each one of them -- parents, husband, parents-in-law, aunts, uncles, siblings, friends, co-workers -- and all it talked about was love, companionship, respect, happiness, pride, virtue, values. Things that neither money, nor designation can buy.

Yesterday, on my birthday, I received almost fifty phone calls, something that has not happened in many years. I not only felt extremely grateful for the love but also realised that I might just be moving in the right direction.