2023 was not less than a roller coaster ride for all of us for various reasons. We saw so much in this whole year and now when it is gone, we can look back at it as a beautiful memory, or a lifelong lesson. We saw people leaving us, people coming to our life, people staying and promising to stay, and the same people breaking those promises.

For some, it has been a sweet memory, for some, it was a sweet ride, for some a tough one and for others a nightmare. It was a mix-match of everything we have realized till now, for the ones who have started earning this year, I know life changed for them and the ones who are yet to, don't worry it will change for you too. Time spares no one, you can not have sunny days without cold winter nights. Not all days will be the same, remember that.

There are a lot of things I learnt from this year,

why was it a teacher for me, a guide, a mentor and yet memorable, and still painfully beautiful.

Here are my learnings and I hope, you do understand them, and they will help you to be better this year.

1) People who have talked to you in those lonely nights will someday go away in the bright mornings. You have to keep the memories in you and not shed a tear because people, they come and go but memories they stay and if you start crying for everyone who leaves, you will have no more tears left to shed when they actually matter. Trust me. May it be your loved once, may it be your peers or sometimes close relatives. Time spares no one.

"People don't change. The time, it does."

2) Love will come to you the day you will stop looking for it and so will happiness and I will tell you something that it is not at all like the ones in those novels or fairy tales, burn all the books which talks about love being a healer only, yes it heals but it keeps on giving its own wounds and before you even try to love someone else, remember to love yourself first. So even if you fall for the wrong person, even if you had a horrible mistake, even if the world does not seem right for you, right now, just wait for a while, and see one day when you love yourself enough maybe more than your insecurities, you will be ready to fall in love again, and maybe with the right person this time.

"You can not love a person more than yourself if you do not love yourself in the first place."

3) Your education is a waste if you can not stand for what is right and what is wrong in your own eyes. Throw away your degress and stop calling yourself an intellectual if you fear being wrong. Nothing in this world is discovered or invented without any trial tribulations and if you keep yourself away from failures, you will never even know how success looks like. Only once you lose, only once you fail, you will know and enjoy the success and your little achievements. So choose the career you like, choose the partner you love, make your own mistakes if you do, and learn from them so that next time, it is you who knows better, not your parents, who maybe already do, just from not your perspective. Never settle for your parent’s choices, they do think it for your own good, but till you will not be in the pit, you will not know how to get out of that the next time you will be in such a pit. Learn to accept failures, embrace them, enjoy them, but most importantly, do not fear them.

"You have to be wrong in a lot of eyes to be right in your own."

4) What you say or feel might hurt some people in a way that you can not go back with them and fix it up but remember, if you don't tell them how you feel now, it will stay in you making you toxic, making you injurious to other people and then it is your decision that if you will stay toxic to all for that one person who has been toxic to you?

"Relationships are broken not because people do not understand each other but because finally, they do."

5) Death is an ultimate reality and life is always ready to give you unexpected surprises and you can not say that, "I was not ready." or play a reset button and start over. We need to remember that anything can happen, we need to remember that any day can be our last or anyone else’s, we need to live and not just exist and yes mourning over our lost loved ones is natural, you can not stop it. You should not. But death is the ultimate truth and one day, we need to accept it, not as our foe, but as our friend like the third brother in deathly hallows. (Harry potter reference, yes because warm movies make your heart warm)

"Death just transfers the pain of one person into several others."

6) Mental health is equally important as physical health. A lot has been already talked about in this year and I feel that a lot of us still don’t understand the things those anxious, depressed, or bipolar people go through. We need to understand that some of us are normal, some of us are not and that is normal. All they ask for is a comfortable pullover in you, do not be the reason to ignite their anxiety and let their mind tell them, "I told you so not to tell this person, he/she won’t understand. No one will."

"Every night I am anxious about being alive, why and what keep on coming to me and I have no answer. The whole night passes away in finding the answer, every night."

7) Self-love is most important. If you are not happy with your life, you have to make efforts and see what the problem is. You can not keep cursing yourself in hope that someone will come to you and share your pain. Maybe they will, but till when are you going to do the same? Forever? Maybe that is how you get addicted to so much of pain, pain is your home now. Don't let it be. Try to see the good things in you because remember even when the nights are dark, they have the brightest stars.

"You keep on saying that you love a person and you will keep on failing to love them, know the reason? Where is the share of the love you need to give to yourself, eh."

8) Trust is something which is a rare thing. Remember that everyone you talk to is not trustworthy. Remember it always because I know that you have been broken so many times now that either you do not have trust left in you or you just keep on trusting everyone you come across to see how far can you go crumbling your trust to nothing, in the end.

"Trusting people can be a mistake or a lesson. You will learn it only when they leave."

9) We have our share of bad days along with good ones. We can not say that the whole year was a good one because dark days came in our ways. The days when we were broke, the days when we lost someone, the days of heartbreak and the days when living was more difficult than dying and I congratulate you that you survived all those days and are reading this today celebrating your bravery, your determination and will to live. Remember, For every bright sunny day, there is a cold winter night too, as we have seen this year.

"Not all days are the same, not all people are the same, not all moments are same and remember, in all those times, you will also not be same. Do not be apologetic about that ever."

10) Never even think about how you feel, what you say, what you do, how you write, act, behave, pretend because no one else but you know your story. They don’t know the struggle behind what you are today, they don’t know what you have been through or are going through and a lot of people will criticise you for what you are, they will challenge your behaviour, notions and beliefs and they will keep saying that you are wrong but if you are sure enough about yourself and your instincts then do not listen to them or be sorry about who, what, and how you are.

"Let time change you, not people."

Bidding this year goodbye with all the bittersweet memories and people who are still with us, in hope that the coming year will be better and we learn all the more things which makes us what we are, what we will be for us, for the world.

Remember that life is a journey about all the decisions you took, and the ones which you didn’t so even if you have to regret in the end, you can be happy that it was your own and someday you will make the right decisions, meet the right people, love the right partner, but before that, you have to fall in and for the wrong ones.

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PS - To all those readers who still read, thank you. Indebted forever. Hope you learn from all the things, and stay brave and strong. Here’s hoping to mend all the broken hearts, and giving the love to the one who actually deserves it.

~

Yours green flag and still struggling to love someone

Shivam Gupta©