As another year comes to a close, there is always time to take the opportunity to reflect upon how the past twelve months have impacted our lives. A chance to reflect upon the good, think about any mistakes we may have made, and of course, to take the time to think about how the forthcoming year can be a better one.
I usually fall back into the usual routine and habits by mid-January. But this is no ordinary new year approaching. As I think about the age I am now, I realise that as one decade closes and a new one begins. This ending decade has been the biggest and most life-changing of them all.
As with any previous decade ending the world evolves into a new era that some embrace, some query and others seem to remain in a closing moment. Technology has changed us hugely in the previous decade. Smartphone has become less of a tool to communicate and now more than ever they reflect how they are now part of our everyday lives. For the better, and for the worse.
Technology has been part of my life for three decades. From the very first home computer I had in 1985, this became not just a way to be entertained but a career that I carry with me to this very day. The way we live our lives now has never been under so much scrutiny. From the digital footprints that we share to the data we build and grow each day in the cloud, it becomes a world that we are collectively part of each waking second.
The older we get, the more I feel we seem to think deeper about the way we live our lives. When I look back on this past decade, I realise that my generation is morphing into the next. I am no longer in my thirties, no longer planning what life will hold as a career. I am now at that stage where I feel halfway between the young and the old. My parents are slowing down, father in his seventies, mother approaching seventy.
I wonder how many more similar Christmases I need to endure each year. Whilst now balancing that thought with tinges of regret about just how many of this seasonal holidays I will have left with them. I realise that in the past ten years it has not just been elderly family relatives I have lost. It is also friends I grew up with. My generation is no longer invincible. I can no longer eat and indulge what I used to without thinking about the consequences.
Even the trips home have now become ones where I wonder if the people, whom I have spent most of my life knowing, wondering if their shockingly ageing appearance has become as withered and forlorn as my own.
The past decade has been one of personal challenges and growth. A decade ago I had a plan hatched ready to move overseas. Now as I approach the 2020s, it is a time to think about how I did not just move but now living in a new country, embrace a new society. Become a citizen in a foreign land and think about if the hardships, the pain and the struggles were all worth it.
There has been growth, there has been memories and friendships created that will forever stand the test of time. I am not saying that would have not happened without the move, it can be the same if the circumstances were the same. This is more of a self-journey that just has created my latest trilogy of poetry books. But what the last ten years has truly taught me is that time waits for nobody. We have all lived, loved and lost. The next ten years will purely amplify that.
What is the underlying line is that life is something I have taken for granted, it’s something along the way I have become selfish and it’s been all about me? The next decade will be the reverse.
