Daily Fix

Year-end Balance Sheet

T. SHER SINGH

I saw a friend go through this exercise well over two decades ago. Ever since, I've been hooked on it. I tend to adjust and fine-tune it slightly from year to year, depending on where I'm in life and what my needs are.

I've written about it before.

Here’s what I do this time of the year; the core of the exercise has remained the same, ever since I first stole the idea --

I seek out a quite evening.

Alone. The phone ringer is switched off. So are the TV, the radio and the computer. A tall mug of piping hot chai.

This year it’s an iPad instead of a pad of paper and a pencil.

I begin with my first list: The Ten Best Things That Have Happened in My Life in the Last Twelve Months.

There are no rules or parameters. The things that have given me bundles of joy, or brought me oodles of satisfaction and contentment ... that's it.

I use the delete button liberally, because the list is limited to ten. As I think of new things, I check if they displace anything I've already jotted down.

It takes a while. But only because the list is always long and has to be pared down. And doing a survey of the year  -  reliving it through a quick flash-back reel  -  is immense pleasure in itself. I check my calendar and my diary, to jog my memory.

I find I close my eyes from time to time ... the memory of good times past has its own aroma, its own unique taste and texture.

I then turn to a fresh page and begin a second list: The Ten Best Things That Have Happened in My Entire Life.

One would think it would take ages to review 64 years. But it doesn't because the "best things" are always floating on the surface of our memory. They are evergreen. Easy to spot. They are the cross-roads of our life's journey.

Once I have completed this list, I put it beside the first one to see if the two lists have anything in common.

I have developed my own gauge, my own litmus test: if at least two of the best things in my entire life to date are from the last twelve months, I declare the year just gone a total and unqualified success.

I declare it to myself, that is. Privately. Alone. Not to the world.

I should add at this juncture that it is an integral part of the exercise that the lists not only be done alone, but never shared with anyone. A-n-y-o-n-e.

I will erase and discard them at the end of the evening! Why? I want to use all the objectivity I can muster in a process which drips with subjectivity. The idea that another person would see the contents creates an audience, and would therefore automatically distort my judgement and colour my analysis.

And the measure of "success" that I use is a purely personal one. One criteria, for example, that I apply is that to be counted as “success” for me, it should be something that gives me pure, unadulterated joy.

If I find that the "test" of two common items is not met, then I know that I have to try harder in the coming year to live life to the fullest. Life is short and uncertain; there is so much to cover before the bell tolls!      

Once past the two lists, I then turn to yet another fresh page, and start a third list: The Ten Things I Would Like to Do/Achieve the Most in the Next Twelve Months.

These don't have to be material or tangible goals, necessarily. There can be a mix, too. One item can be: Visit Timbuctoo. And the next could be: Better Health. And so on ...

The process is like producing a personal agenda. Merely identifying things that impassion me, and putting them down on paper, albeit for a short while, somehow etches them deep in my mind. I do forget about them at a conscious level, but they sit there somewhere ... I have found I somehow get steered in the right direction when I find myself at a fork at some point of time.

Also, it involves making a declaration, nay, proclaiming a manifesto, to myself. My friend, who I picked up this eccentricity from, saw it differently: she said that you are releasing the agenda out into the universe, and the rest is up to it -- the universe -- to make it happen! It was too metaphysical for me, her theory.

I stick to my own explanation in that I am confronting myself with my needs, my wants, and my priorities. My hopes and dreams and aspirations. My goals. The rest follows. It isn't important how or why it works. The important thing is: it works for me.

At the end, I discard this list as well. I find that if I go through the exercise in all sincerity, with all due diligence, and jot it down, and read it to myself, it gets stored in my subconscious. I don’t need to keep a physical copy or turn to it later. Since the conscious serves the subconscious, and vice versa, why do more?

With less than two weeks to go before the ball drops, my mind is already chomping at the bit.

This time around in the New Year, I enter the big 65th year of my life. And sikhchic.com enters its 10th calendar year, having been birthed in late 2005. There’s so much to be thankful for. This year in particular, I fear it’s going to be tough choosing the top 10 blessings, no matter which list.

And there ain’t much left in the bucket list either!
 

read other articles in Daily Fix