A Life Lived in a Decade

It’s all ‘start-of-decade’ to ‘end-of-decade’ comparisons, huh?

At the start of the decade, I had just set foot on foreign shores with shaky yet determined steps. I had a hopeful heart and a head full of lofty dreams. Dreams of settling down on these foreign shores, dreams of finding love, dreams of providing a good life for my family. I had a long road ahead of me that I knew I had to tread to transform me into an adult. I was just about leaving the threshold of adolescence, very reluctantly, ten years ago.

I had my Dad with me. I had my grandmother with me. I had with me the world I knew and loved so well, the world I grew up in. All my dreams were set and envisioned in that world.

Looking back, it almost seems like this decade took as much from me as it gave me. This decade took away a piece of my heart and a piece of me - forever. It took away my Dad and my grandmother, the world as I knew it and all my naïveté.

And yet, it gave me everything I yearned for, worked towards, dreamed about. I experienced the best college days of my life at graduate school. I gained not one but two degrees, a whole lot of knowledge and broadening of thought-horizons. I achieved every dream I had in mind when I set foot here, all those years ago - almost every dream. I made something of myself, I’m learning to grow and mature every day - becoming an adult I’ve found is always a work in progress.

The best of all, the love of my life found me. And poetically so, we married in the final year of the decade, rounding up this chapter of life - at least for me to fit neatly into these ten years.

Thoughts on a December Night

You step out of the comfort of your modern well-heated vehicle into a cold December night. 

The evening is young but the sky is overcast with thick grey-brown clouds and the sun’s been long gone. That combination seems to erase the distinction between normally light-seeming early evenings and darker late nights. 

As you gaze up at the brown leaves of the majestic American Sycamore silhouetted in shades of grey and brown against the cloudy sky, a cool wind blows right against your face.  

The chilly feeling of the season imparts a slight menacing quality to the atmosphere. The darkness of the sky makes it seem mysterious. But it’s also enchanting. And strangely familiar and very strangely comforting. 

The evening inspires you - you find yourself resolving to enjoy this turn of season and make the most of its dark, mysterious beauty.