A new beginning

So it has finally happened. The new decade has begun. Newspapers, magazines and television channels have been going crazy doing special editions to celebrate first the end of the last year and decade and now the start of a new one. And most of them say that life can only get better now. But can it? And was it really that bad? And does a single moment, when past becomes present, make that much of a difference? As with any decade, the last one had its ups and downs - doesn't everything? There were terror attacks and deaths, a recession and many peaks in the sensex. There were successes and their counterparts: failures. It is all part of the game, isn't it? What goes up must come down and all that good stuff?
For me, as an individual, life had its share of good and bad times. I found friends and lost some, slid out of relationships, sometimes with great trouble and pain and sometimes more easily than I would have thought possible. And I made new bonds, meeting people I felt I had known all my life, going through the testing process of trying to know whether they could be mine or not, and finally adding them to the inner circle that we all treasure and protect. There were moments of intense joy and times I wish had never been part of my living memory - I lost my most precious ties in my mother and my cat, both with agony that no one ever should know. But in that I gained a central core that is strong, unbreakable, one that I will not allow anyone to enter without special permission. I worked on many projects, enjoyed a few of them and resolved, at the end of it all, when I finally took the decision to stop working full time for a while, to do only what would and could give me a satisfaction that would make me want to go back to it every day. It has not been easy, that last twist in my tale, but it had to be done.
Over the past year, a lot of growing up has happened for me. I understood what I was all about and became happy with what I was rather than craving what I could be if I really wanted to and if Fate allowed. I had always known that power did not come from a title or a paycheck, but lived that ethos in a way that made it my personal and governing principle. And even as I cursed that same Fate and mourned loss of various kinds, from people to ego, I liked the choices I made.
And the only resolution I will keep for the next year, the next decade, the rest of my life, is to be myself and happy with it.
Which makes a whole lot of sense, don't you think?