One thing that I like about the year that I was born in, is that it was mid decade. That gave clear demarcation to what has been a chaotic life. I clearly spent my formative years in the 1990s, finished my education in the 2000s and wallowed into mid-life in the 2010s. Like our big governments, I could plan my 5 year plans and exactly like them, I could watch how my best plans would come undone in the most spectacular fashion.
I had a theory growing up in the 90s that every even year would work in my favor. Fewer trips to the principal's office, lesser complaints captured by the teachers for my parents to acknowledge and grades that reflected my optimism more than my hard work. I lived each year by the skin of my teeth, the patience of my teachers and the fervent prayers from loved ones for my redemption. Hurtling to the end of the century, my hopes rested on the end of humanity guaranteed by prophesied destruction and software failures.
I woke my disappointed self into the new century, realizing that nothing had changed for me and everything did. While the rest of the world discovered the advent of terrorism, I found myself arrested as well, basking in the innocence of love and infatuations. I coasted through my education like a rudderless boat, searching for new horizons that lay comfortably close, demanding low effort and providing lesser returns. When the joy of the first pay check, the sheen of the first promotion and the thrill of the first pay hike vanished, I found myself left empty and wanting. And then I found myself a student again, exactly how the decade started
The end of the 2000s saw me at my lowest, with fortune's fair winds finally abandoning my sails. So the first birthday of the new decade found me wrestling with uncertainty and doubt, far from home. A student again, broke and broken, I remember sitting at the stroke of midnight wondering what the world would have for me in the decade that lay ahead.
And what an absolute mess the first half of the 2010s was . My actions met consequences for the first time. Like a fumbling toddler, everything I picked up was at the expense of another shiny bauble crashing into the ground at my feet. I found myself a single man once again and I reveled in gleeful abandon. I travelled to the strangest of places and I lost myself in corners of the world I never expected to be in. I found myself in strange company, left to my own devices and a battered moral compass. I discovered my inherent dishonesty, my darkest vices, my cruelest convictions and my remorseless conscience.
Like my birth, my redemption was also fortuitously mid decade. As cliched as it was, the redemption was through the structure of marriage and the tenets of faith. Just when I thought I lost my bearing completely, I found myself all over again. I found friends, I found interests, I found a long-lost lust for life and a yearning to be whole again. I sought solace and lumber to mend broken bridges. Through my mistakes, I learnt the conviction not to judge and not to submit to judgement ever again. Work brought me peace, travel brought me contentment and love brought me purpose.
As I sit now watching the clock tick to midnight back at home, I am tempted to look forward and speculate what the 2030s would bring me. Would l read this again and laugh at the naivety of a man or would I be tempted to add onto this as fodder for my inevitable old age ? Would I marvel at how easy the 35 year old man had it, not knowing the crushing weight of the years to come ?
Whatever it may be, I am grateful for what I am and what I have with the ones I get to share it with. I hope my 45 year old self reaches the same conclusion.
