My resolutions for 2021

School friends are special. These friendships are unique and different from other friendships we make through life because they are forged during our age of innocence. An age where our worries were limited to our home assignments and our school examinations. All which seemed immense in those years, but now seem trivial compared to the worries and responsibilities we all increasingly bear as we progress through our journey of life. The lightness of life in our school years builds strong bonds. We leave school and build, often very different, lives across different worlds defined by different geographies, professions and levels of economic success. Often these worlds never intersect. Yet when one meets an old school friend, somehow the conversation seems to start where we had left it. As if the intervening years, sometimes decades, where we never met, or spoke, or even communicated, never happened. So, when a school friend passes away, you suddenly feel a loss. Loss of something you had but you never knew you had, and you only realise you had it when you have lost it. This December I lost a school friend. When I met her in 2012, in Washington D.C., it had been after a break of nearly 24 years since we had last met or even communicated. But when she picked me up from the train station in Springfield, VA, drove me to her home, it was as if our conversation had never stopped and the intervening years had been just days not years.  Later, as I moved on from Washington DC, we kept in touch sporadically through the new technologies of social media. Five years ago, she developed and recovered from cancer. This year her cancer returned with a vengeance and she passed away in December. As such events do, this triggered in me a period of contemplation about my own life and about what I should do different in 2021. The loss of a friend, especially one of your own age, reminds you that life is short and actually the most valuable thing you have is time.

This is what I have resolved to do in 2021:

1.    Make more time for my family and friends.

Our well of happiness springs from the relationships we have. No matter how rich or successful you are, you are unlikely to be happy if you don’t have friends or family to share your riches or success with. And the more time you spend on your relationships, the better they will be nurtured and richer will be your fruits of joy. Likewise, while good relationships will survive years of neglect, the pickings will diminish over time. All relationships need time and no matter how busy one is, one can, and one should, find the time to keep, and grow, one’s friendships and family ties. So I have resolved to spend more time with my friends and family in 2021.

2.    Make more time for community.

I have done very little charity in my life. Given little back to the community. Always had the good intentions, but never found the time. The community I live in gives so much to me and it should be only fair that do my bit and address the deficit in my account balance with my community. So, I have resolved to do more to make this world a better place in 2021.

3.    Make more time for myself.

Four years of grind in a start-up, where there are few holidays (none actually) and where one, constrained by the limited budget, has to do the job of multiple persons, has meant a big sacrifice of “me-time” and a cost on one’s health. It is not a good trade-off. The importance of one’s health to one’s happiness is self-evident. So, I have resolved to make more time for myself in 2021

These are my resolutions for 2021. I would love to hear yours.