Knowing who you are.

The beginning of a year also poses the difficult question of what to start writing on. For obvious reasons, the beginning of the year post will be scrutinized. Many will start with resolutions and promises and what they see are the challenges for the new year. For me, the new year is as much important as the years that have passed by. The years which have presented me with rich experiences through various people and channels. Thus the new year and the years gone by present me with the challenge of knowing “who I am.”

I can blurt out a volley of resolutions, some of which I might do, some which I will repeat the next year and others which will always be inscribed in the hall of fame of resolutions. I hate resolutions anyway, so I won’t go the common path but will take a deviation down a dusty path which is not even on my map. Call it a rush of adrenalin, insanity, a sense of adventure. But maybe I don’t want to take the neat looking road of certainty but would want to toy with a bit of uncertainty.

Knowing who we are and what we want to do are supposed to go hand in hand. But there are several of us who end up doing (working) what we don’t like. Circumstances and the need of the hour are responsible for this as several of us do not have the luxury of doing what we like to do. We do try hard to convince ourselves that we have figured out things for ourselves and we know what is good. But the new year is also a time when we could be hit by a bolt of realisation that maybe we haven’t hit the bulls eye, atleast not yet.

I wanted to be a pilot (like most kids) when I was young. My neighbour friends even called me for games where we would play being in an aeroplane and played roles to fit the scene. As soon as I had to see a doctor, my thoughts shifted to being one myself. That didn’t last long as I dreamt of being a taxi driver, a mechanic, an IAS officer, a police man, a teacher, a mime artist, an actor and what not. Every week or month was a different phase of life, when the dream and need for achievement would be re examined and re fixed. This avatar could not be placed in one bracket.

Coming through all this I still don’t know who I am. I know what people call me. I am an achen or priest in Kerala and am expected to fulfil some roles which someone has fixed. After all the role plays of young I am again put into a role play which I am expected to perform. Any deviance from the original plot is not always seen as a stroke of genius, but misbehaviour and disobedience. But I guess the job that I have is also a mix of all the role plays I did when I was young. It’s a mixture of euphoria, excitement and disappointment in varying degrees.

This new year there are no resolutions. This new year 2010 is about learning who I am, over and over again. It’s a time of stepping into the shoes of various people, in various roles and understanding what the role is about. It’s the time when I will have to say ‘cut’ if I am not doing justice to my role. It’s a year to listen and learn from other people so that I find myself out from the billions of others around me. Happy 2010.