Life Etc Etc

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; Rudyard Kipling ( IF ) I encountered both of the impostors mentioned above during the course of the last year and life has not been the same since then .  What's worse than a disaster?  It's a disaster which follows a triumph. Just when you think that your life is better than ever, you are jolted into reality and reminded how precarious life actually is. It takes a lifetime to set-up something but it takes less than a second for all of it to turn into dust. You have to find illuminated space within yourself <Courtesy: William Daigneault > We, human beings are expendable, replaceable and inherently perishable.  Yet, we act tough and surround ourselves with hubris for the short while we are here. We feed our fragile egos at every turn and one day when life smacks us we complain that it's cruel. The truth is that we are just fortunate to have a lot of things that we take for granted....

Five years ago on this very day I didn't have a clue as to what I was doing. I had just floundered on a very important interview and there was no end in sight for the rut I seemed to be on. I was no fresher, had close to a decade of experience and was at one point excellent in converting interviews. Friends who started with me were all well-settled and here I was experiencing a mid-career slump unable to nail down a job. Half-a-dozen opportunities blew past me and my dreams of making it in Canada were slowly evaporating before my very own eyes. What did I do? I strolled down to CN Tower in Toronto just to clear my mind. Height of the CN Tower Even though my life was quite literally going nowhere I found myself standing at a greater elevation than most people in this world (thousand feet give or take). That very thought made me smile. That smile in turn reminded me   that things were not really as bad as they seemed. Sure, I had to figure out a way to perform better in my intervie...

My thoughts as of January 1st, 2021 2020 just passed me by. It started off with lofty ambitions before nosediving and finally settling itself on a precarious cliff. The sights from the cliff are beautiful, the light on the horizon is magnificent but there's danger and harrowing depths all around this cliff. I don't know how we got here and have to figure out where to go from here. I share this confusion, this lack of direction and the same precarious situation with billions of others around the globe.  For the first time in a long long time we had a year which united us. We were: United in our confinement  United in having our lives stalled mid-way United in our inability to chase our dreams United in our frustrations United in our solitude I never knew misery could unite us the way no happiness or victory ever did . But if we put the misery aside for a moment, aren't we fundamentally all lucky to at least have a roof on our heads while this pandemic rages on? What about th...

Now I am making a habit out of this! For the second consecutive year I am reviewing my takeaways for a year gone-by almost a month into the new year. But this is no ordinary review, this is a recollection of everything I've learnt over a grand total of 365 days. Hence the time I have taken to write this blog is extremely warranted (Thou shall all see). So where do I start, I start off this blog right where I left the last one. The New Year's eve of 2019 , while the world was celebrating the New Year I was having a quiet night all by myself and reflecting on a year gone too soon. Fast forward to New Year's eve of 2020, I couldn't believe how fast a year had just passed. If 2018 was a supersonic jet then 2019 proceeded to culminate at rocket speed. Are days flying by too soon? Is time outrunning us? Why does it always seem that happy moments roll by quickly while the dismal ones seem to last a lifetime?  Yours Truly might not have the most accurate answers to any of ...

It was new year night, while the entire world was partying and going crazy with their friends and family, I was fast asleep giving my body some much needed rest. This new year's eve didn't rank in the upper echelon of all the happening new year eves I've had in my life. There was a new year's eve where I flew half way around the world to give a monster surprise to my friends and family, there was one which I celebrated after making a podium finish at Toastmasters District(National) Table Topics contest, there was another where sandy beaches and crystal blue skies were beckoning me for a memorable holiday. Yes, I was blessed to be a part of some fantastic New Year Eves but none of those years gave me the peace that 2018 did. So how a year ends is not reflective at all of how the year has been . In my blog about 2017 , I wrote about how taking a step back and doing nothing is actually a good thing. 2018 on the contrary was all about getting back on the horse and gallo...

So here we are in 2018 with another year gone way too soon. But why am I lamenting? Almost nothing went to plan in 2017 , I was stalled, stumped and almost stopped. I spent long periods of time doing nothing, didn't make many new friends (frankly lost a few close ones), didn't add the precious zeroes to the bank balance, didn't take pics which generated many likes and didn't even write a blog post which generated enough buzz. So why am I thinking about a year which I probably couldn't wait to end? Why am I even writing a blog about it? A year where it took time to recognize the path  The answer is very simple, the year 2017 gave me time . It gave me loads of time as I transitioned between jobs. True, the break wasn't expected but the down time was exactly what I needed after more than five years of non-stop work. If it was up to me I would have put off taking a vacation for at least another year but time intervened to give me a break when I needed it...