Lessons from life

This is not a birthday blog – let me make that clear upfront. This is, if one has to necessarily pigeon-hole the piece, a studied recollection of the past year of my life more than anything else. Indeed, one could even call it my first online ‘diary’ entry and they wouldn’t be too far off the mark. Call it what you want, I have always maintained that I write this blog merely to serve as an instrument for fond recollection in my sunset years.

2014 was a landmark year for me – one filled with both peaks and troughs – including the successful completion of my post-graduate degree, landing my first ‘management’ job and also, quite belatedly,  having my first road accident. If I have to describe the past year with one word, I would choose ‘erudition’. For, I have never learned more than what I did in the past year.

Now how could that be, you might ask? After all, I did spend a majority of the past 22 years of my life indulging in one form of learning or other, be it as a (reluctant?) participant of a rigid education system or otherwise. There was one important distinction that set my ‘education’ last year apart – almost all of it was experiential and not-so-inconsequentially, visceral. It is important to note that I am not belittling the significance of knowledge attained from the written word here (of which I had a lot last year), when I talk about my education. Rather, I’d like to shed some much needed light on the other side of the learning paradigm – that which is fructified first-hand via life’s existential nuances, those seemingly minor quirks of fate which lead to moments of absolute mental clarity.

Such ‘eureka’ moments are often brought about by the most trivial of circumstances and result in blessed comprehension that makes you wonder, ‘Oh wait - here’s something I’ve always known but never realized before!’ Hence, in keeping with my well-defined penchant for bullet lists, I shall go ahead and list my top three lessons from the last year, gained as a result of a few such ‘quirks’:

•         The first one was the most unpleasant of the lot – the road accident near my office. It was a case of he-said-she-said when it came to apportioning blame and I quickly realized the situation was getting worse by the minute – my victim had a nasty-looking gash on his right forearm and the kerfuffle had attracted a few curious lookers-on. It was the moment I realized what real confrontation can feel like – and how a little bit of tact can help in extricating oneself from an unpleasant situation.

•         This second lesson was something I had known all my life – but only recently completely understood. Financial prudence has always been one of my top priorities – be it my own or that of my near and dear. It came as a rude shock to me when, as I sat reading the morning newspaper, I realized how naïve I had been investing in debt alone. Diversification of one’s asset class, I realized, was of paramount importance if one intended to inorganically grow their money. This is one life-lesson I don’t regret learning early.

•                 Out of all the ‘lessons’ I learnt last year, this one is perhaps the most interesting – and a tad bit embarrassing. Given my cloistered, orthodox upbringing and decidedly anti-social household, I had grown with nary an inkling about the machinations of a woman’s mind – what is their thinking process,  how do they differentiate between what is cool/uncool, how do I approach one without setting off all the wrong signals? Understanding girls was one of my top priorities for the last year and I am happy to report I’ve made considerable progress in this regard – special thanks to a select few for helping me on that particular journey.  

Somewhere along the line, I have come to understand that these lessons may not mean much in the short-term but possess the potential for leaving a profound impact on my thought-processes, my psyche and as a result, on my way of life itself. And for that, I am eternally grateful.