It has been 2.5 months now since I moved from India to Singapore. When I first came to know that Life has presented me an opportunity to move away from my home, various thoughts ran across my mind – all offering me different perspectives concerning my personal life, my family, my friends, my marriage plans and my professional life. The thought or a perspective that made me take the decision of taking this up was to experience this phase of moving away from home, from my comfort zone, from a dependent life to something which puts me through situations testing my patience, questioning my resolute to manage my life, challenging my determination to live life the way I want to, asking me if I can lead an independent life and evaluating if I am ready to take on life & manage my family in times coming ahead.
When the first thought of getting married ran across my mind half a year back or so, I asked myself how can I let an important person about to come in my life be partially (partial because women today are more independent than ever) dependent on me when I don’t know whether I can depend on myself? How can I take the partial responsibility of another person when I don’t know if I am capable of taking my own? How can I help manage her life, her issues and her situations when I don’t know if I can manage my own? Though I agree and believe that life is much livelier and blissful than to worry about these odd problems. But, then Life is quite uncertain and it’s in best interest of an individual to be prepared for worse happenings in life. After seeing and going through the past decade, I firmly believe the fact that anything, good or bad, can happen in this damn world.
So, here I am 2.5 months into this experience sitting on my bed thinking about it. These months have been busy to have not given me a moment to sit and think if the perspective with which I took this decision, is proving its worth. Am I worth going through this phase? Am I making myself ready to take on life ahead? Now is the time to think I say to myself.
I would not say I am 100% ready to take the next step but am definitely going in the right direction. That’s a good news. Thinking about these 2.5 months, it has made me see a few things not seen before, taught me a things which I never knew I would need to learn and gave me more insights into what kind of a person I am. It has made me realize some new talents I possess, some more imperfections that I have and has taught me how to praise yourself when I do something good for myself and how to rebuke myself when I know I could have done better. These observations for me are as minor as sleeping on time or waking up on time and as big as buying necessities for myself, cooking for myself or even ironing my clothes (this is most painful). Some may argue that how can sleep on time or ironing can be indicators of whether someone is going in the right direction or not? I would say – Why not? I mean those are the indicators as knowledge, balance and perfection in these minor things that impact our daily lives lead to our desire of being perfect in things which has larger impact on life.
Consider this, generation today rightly considers Men and Women to be on par. I respect this sentiment and believe in it. As we all know gone are those days when women in the house used to clean utensils, cooked for the family and managed household. Now, everything is balanced by both husband and wife. Today, men are expected to know atleast the basic household stuff and rightly so. So, when I say I am making myself aware, knowledgeable and balancing myself in doing these activities, I am somewhere getting ready to take the next step. These minor things instill discipline in life when it requires one.
Though I would not say I am ‘Sanjeev Kapoor or even close to being 1/10th of him’ when it comes to cooking, but I can definitely make myself breakfast, tea, coffee and am trying to make myself lunch and dinner too (Today I cooked khichdi for myself – it was not a bad attempt at all). I am definitely punctual when it comes to making things happen at the right time (this one I am happy about – because back in India, I was known to be punctual and when I came here, I needed to prove to myself that I can be punctual here too even if I have to do many more things than earlier to be on time). It has become a habit now. I do not iron my clothes like it may have come from a 5 star laundry but am sure you would not see a crease in the trousers I wear and this is something just like cooking which improves over time and am sure it will one day look like coming from a 5 star laundry.
It may happen that when something new comes in life, it replaces or deletes something old. But, doing all these tasks and trying to do them perfectly has not made me sacrifice any of my previous habits like reading or writing. I would say 24 hours are as long as you want them to be. I am resting more than ever on weekends, play badminton every Sunday morning and roam around to explore the place.
All in all, this experience has proved to be worthwhile until now. I know many of my friends have gone through this similar phase in past 3-4 years and I just want to say that I was proud of them and now going through a similar experience myself – I am even more proud of them. They would know I am talking about them when they read this.
Not that only people who stay away from home can learn these things, some people do learn it while being in their home as well and this happens when a balanced mind who has gone through this earlier in his/her life passes on this knowledge to his/her next generation. I know of one such family and am happy to have known them, being with them and learned from them. So, having gone through this, I will ensure my kid(s) know what it means to lead an independent life and make them prepared for it while they still stay in their home.
Next update on this would be when I complete half year here. Adios.
Take care and Keep smiling
