In 2019...

Here we are again, on the dawn of the last day of the year. Just like the previous year... I don't know how to put 2019 into words. I don't even know how to describe it. Was it a weird year? Yes. Was it challenging? Yes. I thought it was a rather tough year. I felt confused and alone. I seem to crave certainty more and more. Even though last year I was teaching myself to not do so.

To begin with. I just felt like I become more and more afraid of life. I often wonder how things will work out even though no one knows the answer to this question. As life goes by I become more and more restless. I realise how futile having a hope is. Perhaps in an oxymoronic way, I have befriended uncertainty. I don't know what is coming and I'm just learning to take things day by day.

At the end of each year I often feel like a failure. Okay not a total failure. But I feel like I haven't achieved much as a human being. And that is all because I feel lost too. Like I once said I felt lost, I don't know what I want in life. I don't know what's my purpose and so on. It's annoying sometimes to think about it. I just feel like the world is putting lots of weight on me. Invisible weights perhaps?

And at the beginning of each year, I feel lost again. I feel like there is no point having grand plans and dreams and hopes and ideas. Because I feel like life is too uncertain and it is futile to have them. Things can change. And thus I've just been telling myself to take things day by day.

I have stopped writing resolutions and add them as the year goes by. And at the end of each year... I manage to accomplish most of them. Because I started off with little.

I understand that there are only two certain things in life: death and uncertainty itself. So when things change, when things don't go according to plans, I accepted them really.

Recently I just believe and told myself that life is a huge waiting game. It's just a tremendous game. Of how patiently, diligently and mindfully can we wait to see and witness how life will unfold and unravel itself to us. And see, feel and taste what it has in store with us. Then it's another game of how make use of these things that life has given us. And it just goes on and on. Till we die.

Some of us didn't make it to see the end game. Some of us decided to leave the game first. Some of us push on till the end, no matter how tough the journey is. We are all a customer of fate waiting in line. Thankfully though, we're free to do many things while we're queuing up. And not confined to a line where we can do nothing. We can do, feel and think many different things.

Last year I learned that we cannot stop the flower from blooming. This year I think is just a bug test of how I can patiently wait to see the flower blooming. The flower is blooming, though it hasn't bloomed. How long more can I wait. How long more can I go.Once again, no one knows the answer.

This whole pushing through and going through is taking a toll of my mental health. I know. It's tiring. But I just kept on telling myself to keep on going. I thought 2018 was hard but whew, 2019 was another level for my mental health. It's quite sad how I used to be an optimistic person. And I never expect myself to land on this position, this state right now. But folks here I am now.

But it is in this waiting game that I have learned something that is both difficult to learn, but liberating to accept. The idea that I am meant to be here. I am meant where I am meant to be. There are a few occurrences in this year that have taught me this great lesson. Again and again, life always tells me of this fact. That I'm here. And eventually I learn to go on. That life is leading me somewhere I'm meant to be eventually. A place that nobody but time and life only knows.

I have also learned something this year. It is to stop asking yourself questions that nobody knows the answer to. Until you have a full knowledge of what is going on, that's when you can start thinking of the answers. Once again, this is tough to practice. Because we are all craving for permanence.

As we bid farewell to 2019, we are also leaving a decade behind. Entering a new year, and a new decade. Well, it's been quite a decade isn't it? I feel like I go through a lot in the past decade that makes me learn a lot about myself. I went through a lot of things, tried a lot of things, experienced many things. Landing myself in places I never expected to land. I learned to befriend uncertainty. I have joyfully accepted impermanence, see the emptiness of things. Learned to walk in the dark and eventually dance with my own shadows. I have discovered different sides of me. Yet I feel I still have a lot to learn about myself. And there are still empty places for me to grow.

I think the Avicii's song Wake Me Up is a perfect song to sum up this decade. I've been searching for myself but I ended up being lost. But this journey has been quite an interesting one. Through being lost I kinda find myself. I kinda learn a lot about life. Though I land myself in the darkness, I also see the light. I learn to let go I learn to be strong. I may not know where life is taking me, and if I will ever find myself. But I learn to pick myself up little by little, on a journey of becoming whole.

It's been an interesting decade and I'm thankful for everything that I went through in these 10 years. They definitely have shaped me as the person I am now. I have learned many things. Am I dreading the new decade? Kind of. Am I still afraid of the future? Kind of. 

Am I excited to see what the next decade has in store for me (and us)? FUCK YES!

Alright that's all for 2019. Thank you for everything again, my dearest Clouds of Sunday. There'll be changes as we enter the new year but I will never leave you! I hope 2019 and this decade has been treating you well. I wish you a Tremendously Terrific Twenty Twenty! Let us all be patient, strong and as always, mindful as we watch the flower bloom. As life unfolds and unravels what it has in store for us.

Take care. And Happy New Year.