It’s time to shake the tree. Tree shaking can be a very tidieous process but necessary nevertheless. You need to shake the tree once in a while, to rid all the dead leaves and branches that have long withered and no longer serve a purpose. Yet, you do not want to damage the tree in any way, sometimes the dead branches still do offer support, sometimes the healthy leaves need to be pruned too, to make way for more growth.

It’s a delicate process, deciding on what to prune and what to keep. Deciding on how you want the tree to grow, and how you want to shape it. Deciding on how it’s grown thus far, and if you like the current results. Never quite knowing if the pruning will yield the desired results further down the road.

But yet, there is only so much you can do, pruning and shaping and shaking the tree. The natural elements have their influence too, the sun, the wind and the rain. The fertility of the earth around, the other trees. They all play a part in contributing to how the tree has grown so far, and how it will further develop — but it’s totally beyond your control, and it’s totally unpredictable.

But they too have an important role to play, to challenge the tree and to shape it, to nourish it and to bend it. To give the tree character. To strengthen the tree, deepen the roots and yet mildly sway it.

It’s necessary to do the tree-shaking exercise periodically, to clear the unwanted and to cultivate the neglected. So that the tree can continue to strive to be the best tree in the forest. The tallest tree to provide a view, or the broadest to provide the shade. The thickest to protect from the storm, the most colourful to brighten up the woods.

There are many trees around, but what makes this tree different and so very special, is that it’s my tree.

Final words: We all need a dream. But yet, whatever it is, there is no single purpose to life for everyone. There is no meaning to life except what we attach to it — we get as much out of it as we attach to it. We need to each define our own reasons for living, for being. The sportsperson lives to play the perfect game, the software engineer who wants to develop the killer app, the painter who wants to paint the perfect piece, the musician who wants to play the perfect score, all driven by passion to be more than just alive.

It’s five days into the new year. Just spent the past two saturdays partying like there was no tomorrow, a departure from my otherwise sedate and safe lifestyle. Not sure what I will be doing this evening, but tonight will take care of itself.

It’s that point in time to say, “I resolve to…”, but what do they mean really, or are they merely rituals that keep us sane and somehow help us mark the pitstops in our lives? I don’t remember the resolutions I made last year, but definitely I know that the 12 months that I have exchanged for what I have at this point in my life right now was worth it’s weight it gold.
Thinking about 2002 and how it’s going to be different. And yet the same. Too many things have happened in the past one year, made a few new and very good friends that I didn’t expect to, a relationship ended which I didn’t think would, career got a little better despite an otherwise gloomy economic climate, the world trade center in New York no longer exists.

It’s funny how everything falls in place when put in context. And how the ever weaving tapestry of life reveals a little bit more.

What do I want to do this year? Sometimes, I envy the people who can be and are so certain of each milestone of their lives, so well ordered and how everything seems to fall in place. So predictable. But then again when I do ask myself if that’s the life I want, I’m not sure. There is a certain thrill in less predictability, in not knowing what you are going to get, whom you are going to meet round the next corner. Sometimes it’s a pleasant surprise, sometimes not so much. In both cases, we deal with it and there is no crying foul. We choose what we want in life, and we just have to manage.

Too little or too much? Too fast or too slow? There’ll always be too many questions and too few answers, too many problems, not enough solutions. We make the best of it. Right now, in an otherwise meaningless measure that we call a year, marked by 365 and a quarter sunsets, is a convenient marker that we use to monitor the progress that we make in our lives. And collectively, in our own ways, decide what we want to make of it.

Where we want to go, how we want to get there, who we want to be, what we want to do. And twelve months later, the ritual begins again. We always have our choices.

But heck, if the shoe fits, wear it.

Happy 2002 folks

You’ll like to think that after time, that there is a certain level of predictability in the events that happen around and in the people that you know, especially those who are close to you. I guess the fact remains that it’s something that you HOPE for, than a guarantee. You want assurance that life will go on, problems can be solved, promises will be fulfilled and somehow things will turn out right. That people will not disappoint you, that trust will not be betrayed, that friends will be loyal, that what you have today will still be yours tomorrow.

I still do hope.

But there are disappointments. Things don’t always turn out the way you want them to. Promises are not always kept, not all problems have resolutions, and nothing is permanent.
Yes, life still goes on, unquestionably, which is the irony. Or the blessing? For the pain that we go through each time, with questions that have no answers, and each time we try to grapple with understanding that is far beyond us, the sun still rises the next day.

When you wonder what hope there is, what there is to look forward to — there are no answers. But eventually, hope returns. And you dare to hope again, perhaps a little more careful that the last time, perhaps a little less. There is no predictability and we have to embrace that. There are no guarantees in life and we have to respect and accept that.

We go on. A little older, a little wiser. Because we have to, the alternative is degeneration, which hurts nobody else except ourselves. Life is already too short, we can choose to make every moment count or we can wallow in pits that offer no hope anyway.

Yes, life does change people. But each of us decide, on the kind of change that we want to accept or reject. We can be cynical or we can be hopeful. We choose our destinies, no matter what others say. We create our circumstances, despite what everyone else believe. We can lead or we can follow.

I would like to know that at the end of today, I would have exchanged it for something that will have moved me one little step forward, from where I was yesterday. It’s easy to laugh, it’s a lot harder to cry. It’s easy when things are smooth, it’s tough when things are not. But when adversity knocks, you want to be able to respond to the challenge and rise to the occasion. To know that at the end, you have done your best, been your best.

And that is hope.