Dear Reader,
I have written about 3 letters after September, but did not conclude any of them. Ever since I decided that I wouldn’t write these letters every month, I have been waiting for inspiration to hit but it came and left on a whim. So I decided that I will definitely publish a letter to mark the end of 2024.
My 2025 is ending on a lazy, chilly note with my Accounting book on the side. I am at Chicago with my Aunt and we have decided to prepare some small eats to end the year; some onion pakodas, some tiny sandwiches and perhaps some curd rice. She is an artistic person. So we might try doing some origami art and crochet to ease into 2025.
And then January will be filled with exam preparations as I am writing my first CPA paper in January. Is 2025 going to be my year? Was 2024 my year? I don’t know. Every December 31st, we can’t wait to get rid of the old year and we hope that the next year would be the best year for us. Hope is beautiful, but couple with retrospection, it becomes powerful. From a personal perspective, I have been wondering whether 2023 or 2024 have been bad. I had a terrible time in 2023, but I also had the best time coming out of it due to which I stopped saying that 2023 was the worst year for me. Because the big bad things seemed to shrink in comparison to the many little good things.
You’d think that 2024 may have been a wonderful year since I moved to the US but I don’t think I have been this unstable about my future before. I don’t know what might happen in 6 months. Will I have to leave or do I stay? I miss home so much, and I feel a lack of connection here, in this vast expanse of zero-warmth-zone where I need to carry a huge boulder all by myself.
But keeping all these things aside, I did have a dream as a child to come to the US which has gotten fulfilled. I wanted to explore life abroad, to prove to myself that I was capable of surviving on my own. I wanted to live in a place where women are more independent and aren’t questioned as much about their life choices. I wanted to experience working in a different country. I love the cold weather and blueberries and sunshine and snow and here they are! All of them. I may have sacrificed tea for coffee, warmth for snow, family for independence and world experience, and now I am figuring out if my roots would grow in this soil. It is extremely uncomfortable, but 2024 wasn’t a bad year. It was a year of metamorphosis. So was 2022 which in fact was the year that triggered the new beginning wherein I quit my job! And so was 2023.
All these years will go in a blur, seemingly bitter towards the end and sweet in the beginning. But I want to look at them like a growing canvas, and my actions and experiences as threads of different colors weaving in and out leading to new plot lines. When I look at it that way, the canvas wasn’t at fault. We are all making it up as we go. Some patterns can be undone while some are way too woven into the canvas that we get used to their presence and move on.
When you zoom into your canvas of 2024, I hope you find beautiful patterns where you felt joy, love, warmth and resilience. If you see difficulties, I hope you also see how you overcame them, the decisions that you took, the strength that you portrayed, and the times when you lay low because that was the best you could do. As for 2025, you know what you are hoping for. I wish that you have the time, energy and the mind space to turn your hopes into reality.
I leave you with a picture of the Bahai temple which is a new faith I have been exposed to, one among the many new things I learnt this year.
Wish You a Happy 2025
Warm hugs,
Ranjini