No Regrets, Just Lessons Learnt

Today is the penultimate day of 2015. A day from now, a new year will dawn. But we still have a day to go! The year-end always brings up many thoughts. It's time for reflection, time to look back, time to look forward – it always brings up a kind of score sheet. How well did we really do through this year? For some it would be that this has been a mediocre year and you are hoping that things would change in 2016. For some it's been a terrible year and you're really hoping that there will be a climactic and very definite change, in 2016. You just can't go through another year like this one. For others, it could be that this has been a great year and you think that if you can replicate this year, it would be great; and if you could better it, it would be phenomenal. As Sania Mirza says, "To match 2015, it would be amazing. If we could better it (and she's talking about her doubles' wins with Martina Hingis, and the fact that they've won so many titles this year) I think it would be a dream come true." But, all of us have some idea of where we stand as we look at 2015 and how we have handled it.

I don't want to focus on what one did or did not do well. But I just felt today that, as we look ahead to this new year, it ought to be with a sense of anticipation, that however the year 2015 was, that there is much hope in 2016, and that we can cross over to 2016 with less baggage than we need to, so that we are much lighter in 2016 and better equipped to grasp the opportunities that it will have to offer us. Regret isn't something that we ought to be dwelling on, because regret always has to do with not having done things too well. It always comes with the assumption or knowledge that – I could have handled something differently, either done more work, done less or done nothing at all. But I could have handled that situation differently. That usually leads to a sense of sadness or disappointment.

OVERCOMING DISCOURAGEMENT

Trying to think about what to speak today, a couple of pictures came to mind. I decided to pursue them and see where they were going and I’m going to share that journey with you today. Part of what I do enables me to meet quite a few people, interacting and watching them. The last week or so, I came across a couple of people who looked visibly tired. I was surprised because this was the beginning of the day and we are fresh into a New Tear. It made me curious. They seemed to be enveloped with a sense of discouragement and sadness and other emotions.

I was talking to another friend of mind who came into my office and in the course of the conversation, he said, “I met so and so and he looked so whipped.” I’ve been thinking about that word ‘whipped’ and it seemed to personify someone who didn’t have anything to live for; like he’d taken a beating in life. I thought that sometimes we are enveloped by emotions that, whether we like it or not, seem to come over us and they dictate the way we look at the world after that.