I am 15 going on 51, I know I am naive

A friend asked me if I was writing my customary birthday post studded with pearls of wisdom gathered along the way to being 51. It then occurred to me that I had no urge to do a post this time ; perhaps that is an indication that wisdom was finally on its way?
'In any case what is there to write about?' I asked.
‘Yourself of course – what else are blogs for? write about your journey from 15 to 51’ she said.
My Journey! Wow, that sounded really impressive. – My journey!
Me at 15 embarking upon the adventures of life like a backpacker with only her own resources to rely upon! Shaped and strengthened by life’s vicissitudes and now finally settling down in the armchair with stories that beg to be told, experience that must be recorded for posterity to be inspired and awed.
So I sat and thought about all the wisdom I had gathered along this great ‘journey’. It seemed almost like a responsibility not to leave it all unrecorded.

At 15 my world was very small comprising of family, teachers and friends from school. The high points of one’s days consisted of stuff like getting attention from one’s favorite teacher or scoring the top marks or getting to listen to the current favorite song on radio. Boys existed –as pathetic creatures yet to evolve and become like girls. There didn’t seem much chance for that given their weird inclinations and interests. It was a dreadful thought that you might have to marry one of those creatures some years down the line. But for the moment it seemed far away and things seemed really safe.
In sum , the life of a small town girl? yes, Except that this was in Madras and it was a small town in many ways back then in 1973.

So any journey from such a protected life had to be an exciting adventure and the next 36 years have been quite a ride in terms of the people I have had the opportunity to know, places I have been to and experiences both good and bad. There were times while sitting in the room in Moscow’s Renaissance or dining at Jumeirah beach hotel in Dubai that I imagined that I had gone a long way from being the small town girl I was at 15. There were times in the initial days when it seemed so important to ensure that the humble beginnings did not show in one’s attitude or behaviour. I seemed to be running away from all that I was at 15 and succeeding well too.
Today as I sit here and see where I have come from being that girl of 15, it is such an irony to see that I am just the same girl – only no longer afraid of being so.

Turns out that all that my years of experience have taught me is nothing more than what people around me tried to ‘tell’ me when I was 15. Only they had all sounded like morals from fables then but which I I know now from my experience to be the only things that matter in the final analysis.
So if I had to sum up what I have learned along the way , the list would be something like this:

You are what you are . Do not try to become someone else.. Be the best you can be.

Every one can’t be the richest, prettiest or smartest; but it is possible to be happy even without being all these.

Happiness comes not from how much you have but from learning to appreciate whatever you have.

It is better to be honest and have fewer friends because in any case it is these friends who matter.
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Never stop learning.

You are a special person – only to yourself.

The best way to repay someone who hurts you is to forgive them unconditionally. Life is too short to be spent in settling scores.

At the end of the day what matters is not how much you have accumulated but whether you have been able to make a difference to someone else’s life in a positive way.

Life is a zero-sum game. You cannot have it all. You need to give up something if you want something else. Finally it is all about your priorities.

It is the people in your life that ultimately matter.

These are the simple principles that guide my life since the past 5 years and I feel so calm, so much at peace. I do not pray or visit temples regularly but yes, I believe in a force far superior to me and derive strength from it when I am in doubt. The calm and peace come not from any spiritualism but from an acceptance of me and my life as they are and being guided by these simple aphorisms. Nothing ground-breaking, nothing earth-shattering; simple truths all of which I had heard all through my childhood from people who had learned it all from experience – their own and of those who had come before. Home-spun, old-fashioned, simplistic and small-town-ish perhaps. But as I said in the beginning I have not come too far from the small-town girl I started out as when I was 15. So then that is all this journey has been about – coming back a full circle to where I started, a little wiser and a lot humbler for the experience.