Adieu 2020

 

Today is the last day of 2020. And I am having this irresistible urge to write something. To let my mind wander and weave together random thoughts that bubble in my sub-conscious psyche. Toward the end of a year, I get this urge to look back and contemplate at the year that is just about to fade away, and to pen down my thoughts as we are at the threshold of a new year. I had been thinking of writing something for the last few days, but time has been so scarce that several critical commitments and tasks are piling up even as I am writing now. I was telling my wife yesterday that I needed to write something but if I did, then sending a pending report would be delayed, revising students’ papers and presentations would get pushed to the next year and so on. But then I thought – if I do not write something now, I will not write in a long time because once we step onto 2021, new assignments and tasks would flood in, new hopes of a better tomorrow and renewed vigour toward higher professional goals would push my writing desire to the backseat. The thoughts of 2020 would just evaporate over time, deep inside my mind.

Truth be told, I do get scared every time I write something and share it on my WhatsApp status, fearing that one or more of my students would message me "Sir, please review my paper or research results rather than writing blog". In my defense, I think that reading a technical manuscript or going through research results requires a focused mind, preferably an uninterrupted sitting over the manuscript or power point for an hour. And that is something which is becoming a luxury for me. However, writing meaningless stuff – which I am doing right now – doesn’t require a focused mind. Instead, I let my thoughts wander and fly, and pen down whatever they tell me to. A state of higher entropy!

When I am old (if I am alive by then, that is), I think I would regret looking back at my life and realizing that I didn’t write as often as I had wanted to, rather than regretting over a delayed report submission some 30 years back. If I do not do the things which I enjoy doing, then the madness of the hectic life will leave me dry and hollow by the time I retire because there is no end to work. There is also a subtlety associated with ‘work’ in that the job I do, is not a job I do only for earning money, but something that is sort of my Ikigai. More on that in a later post.   

When I write stuff for my blog, I do not share it on social media because I don’t have any social media account. I do not share it on LinkedIn for obvious reasons. I write because I enjoy writing and for reasons which I outlined in my preceding post; however, a few people may read it or might not dislike reading it. So, I keep it limited in scope – share it over WhatsApp!

Back to 2020.

It was a strange year, for, it was a year of untold miseries and yet a year of resilience and of indomitable human spirit. It was a year of frustration and isolation, and yet a year of hope and introspection. It was a year of distress and loss, and yet a year of learning and adapting. Enough has been written about 2020 in print media, social media and other platforms. Stories of hopes and struggles have been captured, videos of people displaying kindness and love have been shared, and anecdotes of the human will and grit have been told and listened to. So, I do not need to write on any of those.

I also see countless people putting up their success stories in LinkedIn – their promotions, their degrees and certificates, their new jobs and career paths, their awards, their investments, their startup doing good, and so on. Some people also post screenshots of their Scholar profile showing they have reached new milestones of hitting ‘N’ citations and ‘M’ number of papers. Whatever keeps one’s morale high in these challenging times, is worth sharing (although it shouldn’t degenerate into show-offs and meaningless boasts). I also see people requesting for job referrals, having lost their jobs due to pandemic. Some have tried for months without any success. It has been really tough for so many people. 2020 was indeed a year of distress to a large number of people, professionally speaking.

A very large number of people couldn’t make it through 2020 due to the pandemic, and they could have, if it were not for the pandemic, directly or indirectly. And a very large number of people lost someone closest to their hearts. There are also people requiring medical care not related to pandemic, which they couldn’t avail or availed in very limited scope due to the pandemic-induced restrictions. All these are truly devastating incidents. Infinitely tragic.  

The fact that I am writing this and that you are reading this, means that we both are alive. We made it through 2020, and that I believe, is a precious gift we should be thankful about, irrespective of 2020 being the year of pandemic. There were probably a hundred ways we could have died in the passing year, but we didn’t. The gift of ‘life’ is something we should be thankful about. And the gift of good health is the second most important thing we need to be thankful about. Thankful to god if you’re a theist and thankful to the random probability of the cosmic order which kept you alive, if you’re an atheist.

In the broad scheme of things, the end of a year and the start of a new year, are insignificant events because it’s a rocky planet completing one revolution around an average star in an obscure corner of a rather average galaxy. But it is an occasion that gives us a reason to celebrate, and more importantly, a reason to have hope. And ‘hope’ is the flame that keeps all other flames of human spirit and endurance alive and kicking. So, we do hope that 2021 brings an end to the maladies that plagued us in 2020, bestows good health on us and our near and dear ones, pushes us up in our professional growth, and provides us with hope to continue working hard, continue living with satisfaction.

As for me, I wish that 2021 is a year of action based on whatever we contemplated during the many months of house arrest in 2020. We will overcome all odds; we always have.