On this foggy winter night in the first few days of December, I stand on the balcony, wondering about the ephemeral nature of things. Everything begins, and everything ends. This slow burn of time happens each year. No matter where you go, you will always land in December. Our lives fade away like the wick of an old oil lamp, flickering as if it would turn off at any instance. Then comes this wintry, blue month, and somehow, it brings with it the hope of a rewrite, the hope that we can begin this exercise of living again. I think of this, and I stare ahead at all that is waiting to happen to me, and I hope, with all my heart, that they are good. When all things end, and right before all things begin, we always wait for goodness. The coldness of December warms my heart. Life is, after all, an absurd irony.
We have made it, I proclaim silently, almost in a whisper—not all proclamations are loud. Some happen in the softest questions, some in the laughter over dinner, and some happen without words. As I sit here and take stock, I notice nothing but hope and happiness in my heart. Where did all the pain go? I wonder, and I do not have an answer, and that is why we must let time pass. We misplace things in months as they pass us by. I left it somewhere in January, but I could not remember it. So much can happen in a single year, and so much has indeed happened; who can keep track of the what and when, and why must we? The only thing I know as I stand here is this: there is a lot of life in me, in all of us. There is time just yet. We are still writing our stories.
It’s almost as if a breeze has blown by and carried me from my morbid beginnings in January to this utterly fulfilled December. I believe I now understand what they say when they say there is always a second wind.