It has been a year when the Universe paused time to shower me with love and warmth with chai and gifts galore. The Universe says, I earned it and I ask how? The Universe says, you deserve it, and I wonder, do I? I then pause to remind myself and not question the Universe, for the Universe knows. I remind myself, to breathe and enjoy the pampering.
Last birthday I made a promise to try and do 50 acts of kindness that go beyond donating money to charity. Guess, how many I did….. only ten 🙁 I can’t take names but as I go through them, I realize that all I really did in every act of kindness was listen patiently and suggest a solution. Does it really count as ten acts of kindness if the act is the same in every one of them? I don’t know but I do know that all of them just needed a listening ear and I am happy that the Universe chose me to listen to them. And now that I know how hard it is to do 50 acts of kindness, the goal is to continue and try and reach 50. I had also silently promised myself to grow 50 plants and I added only 20. Again a promise that I need to continue to build upon.
These two promises have left me in awe of the heroes who plant seed by seed to grow a forest, the heroes who take care of the homeless, the heroes who everyday live beyond themselves… Respect for everyone of them. And I thought a lot about three angels… Jayne, Amy and Kimberly. I know the heavens are more cheerful for these three are there, but I also hope they ran into each other and are friends.
Jayne. She worked tirelessly at zillion volunteer events everyday with a smile that could brighten up a dungeon. Kimberly, a woman of substance, was often like a mother to me, she showed me the positives in my children when the world stopped believing in them and taught me to have that unshakeable faith in love and caring. She showed me the power of feeding family with love everyday. Amy, a true warrior, through her wit and humor taught me to the best part of someone’s day everyday and I try hard to do that, though I don’t succeed everytime.
Together these three women taught me to keep it real; scream if you need to, cry if you need to, hug often, keep smiling and when the time comes, exit in style.
Birthdays are a time of relection but they are also a time to look forward and dream of the future that is yet to come. As a daughter, a wife, a mother, and more importantly as a woman… I yearn for a future where the phrase “working woman” is synonymous to “being a mother.” A future where the world understands the magic of a domesticated woman – through her sheer tenacity and courage to plow through a society that often questions her decision to soley raise her family, she builds a channel of network that no corporate conference can achieve because the channels of a domesticated woman are based on pure mutual admiration and sisterhood. And on my 50th birthday, I saw these channels come alive.
I saw a circle of friendships, where there were no sides to move, no edges to turn and no angles to measure…
And that is the true blessing of my 50th year.
Happy Birthday to Me! My promise to myself … Continue to be Simply Shilpa
