I had my last sessions of professional coaching/mentor catch-up of the year, which provides perfect material for this short and bitter-sweet finale.
I look forward to imagining myself lying on a beach, as the warm sun nourishes my soul and thinking pleasurable thoughts.
1) Mental resilience is a finite quantity and requires constant replenishment
About 18 months ago, I made tough choices about my professional career.
Accepting that I wanted to build new expertise as part of my 10 year plan, when I was already a formidable expert in another area, is not done lightly.
It is madness.
You quickly realise that sheer willpower only gets you from A to B.
All the other times, its unrelenting, unforgiving hard mental work that pushes you forward to your clear goal.
Even though 2020 bought the pandemic I’m less afraid of the uncertainty that the future brings because I have been living and breathing that sh*t for marginally longer than you.
And after a while, you stop noticing the sh*t around you.
2) My nom de geurre is hermit
I was almost too productive during the lockdowns: the lack of human contact has served me (worryingly) well.
I am in my “happy place” or the “zone,” when I research (e.g.) accelerating melanin pathway synthesis.
This focus comes with a price: I’m suffering from physical and mental burnout, and I have little recollection of my hobbies that makes me happy outside work.
What is disconcerting is how little this bothers me.
3) When I ask “how are you?”, I mean it more than you imagine
Recently, my business mentor called me out.
He said I must expend a large amount of energy maintaining walls within walls to hid who I truly am. That for anyone else the exercise would be mentally exhausting.
Of course, I tried to deny it. But he is right.
After over a decade of knowing me, he sees me now.
It irks me. I project a personality of toughness (which is a consequence of my life’s hardships) but the truth is I feel absolutely everything.
I am that stranger or friend that you unburden your soul, because I feel your pain without trying.
This access to your sanctum sanctorum frightens me.
How can I not but disappoint you?
However, 2020 is a sharp reminder of the fragility and finite nature of human life.
Rather than obsess over my insecurities, I wish I had spent more time helping others.
4) Relations…
start with a generous helping of patience, time and cake or champagne or tequila.
Accepting people for who they are is (and not what I want them to be) has been nothing short of a revelation for me.
Am I any good at it? Hell, no.
5) White privilege is the gift that keeps giving for white people
I often wonder what my life would be if I had made different choices.
Specifically, what would my value system be, if I had married a British white man of privilege? Would I think I have an unfettered right to privacy (no masks) was really that different to safety laws requiring seat belts? Are government’s totalitarian when they insist you wear a mask?
It must be nice being white: ignorant to the pain of Africans or Indians, while you argue over should I take this vaccine or not. I do feel as if one of my aspirational goals should be to marry a white man. My concern is, I’d stop empathising with “my people” as I become assimilated in the whiteness of this club.
Would I think my uncouth, rude and unsophisticated rural Indian relatives, still deserve the COVID-19 vaccine as my (imaginary) white Fortune 100 lawyer boyfriend because he is “going places?”
I will stop here because we both have better things to do.