A new academic year is on the threshold but this time, I seem to be calm and collected in starting the new year. Usually, I feel anxious and jittery but this time it is a different feeling altogether. I don't know whether it is the familiarity, or a sense of belonging or something else. Last year around the same time, I wrote about how I feel anxious and a sense of butterflies taking flight at the deep end; I guess I have passed that stage but that also makes me wonder whether it's the age - ageing does that to you! Nothing seems to surprise or shock you and you have the uncanny ability to anticipate and foresee happenings, reactions, responses and everything else. For example, I can exactly predict what my colleague will say when I ask him/her something; I know what response a student will give when asked some inane question. So much so, I can even predict how meetings and exams will go. Hmmm. No place for novelty, it spells out loud!
But wait, there are moments, tiny ones, which take you by surprise and in some cases, extreme surprise, which make you feel alive and reassure you that yes! moments like these are also there - invisible but there and that they needed to be provoked. Now, it does seem that I am contradicting my self - perhaps so, you have to give some credit to my thought process which is getting rusty and mellow with age! No, before you even start thinking, "Ah! No, you are not so old," let me assure you that this has nothing to do with ageing but ageing of the mind and experience.
That said and done, I await moments - moments that make people engage to their utmost levels devoid of compulsion, marks, people-pleasing and doing-things-for-the-sake-of-doing. You get the drift, right. I just hope and pray that the forthcoming year gives me moments to cherish and job done sans procrastination.
New semester, here I come! Are you ready?
But wait, there are moments, tiny ones, which take you by surprise and in some cases, extreme surprise, which make you feel alive and reassure you that yes! moments like these are also there - invisible but there and that they needed to be provoked. Now, it does seem that I am contradicting my self - perhaps so, you have to give some credit to my thought process which is getting rusty and mellow with age! No, before you even start thinking, "Ah! No, you are not so old," let me assure you that this has nothing to do with ageing but ageing of the mind and experience.
That said and done, I await moments - moments that make people engage to their utmost levels devoid of compulsion, marks, people-pleasing and doing-things-for-the-sake-of-doing. You get the drift, right. I just hope and pray that the forthcoming year gives me moments to cherish and job done sans procrastination.
New semester, here I come! Are you ready?