A Year of Entropy: I Questioned Everything From My Outward Appearance to My Life and How I am Living It
- The biggest gift 2021 gave me was to see where my true priorities should be.
The natural state of the universe is entropy or chaos. There was never a truer way to describe the way my 2021 started, a year in this “Kaliyuga”, which I will look back on as iconic, coming in an era that the ancient Indians predicted was when the universe would devolve into chaos.
It was also a year when I took a “deep dive” into myself, as I think many of us did, without any generational divide amongst us. A year in which I questioned everything from my outward appearance to my life, and how I am living it. Living as I do in New York City, it is a luxury to be able to step outside the box of rote and routine, and 2021 was timed perfectly to help me go back to being me, and so very freeing.
Maybe because we live here practically on top of each other, the idea of isolating oneself as you might on Mount Kailash, living a simpler life, outside the corporate box, is not one that New Yorkers can usually access unless it is forced on us, as it was this past year — year two of a global pandemic.
While 2020 had me longing for my pre-pandemic life, with dinners out, large birthday parties, lavish events and exotic vacations, 2021 let me look at my life, right now, stripped bare, and gave me the time and mental freedom to shape my future.
It was not that my life was on hold, as I had quickly adapted to a work schedule devoid of commuting, of scheduling around the lack of child care, remote learning, online grocery shopping, house cleaning, COVID testing and endless meetings on zoom, but all these adaptations threw my desires for a new life into even starker relief.
So here I am, at the tail end of this chaotic year, in a still chaotic universe, having found my own order in it, my own pace, and most of all, my own peace.
I am an introvert who has an extroverted side, but in 2020, the introvert took over. I found time to go back to reading real books, cover to cover, to explore cooking and develop some of my own recipes, to learn how to teach Bharatanatyam online effectively, to really listen to my friends whom I couldn’t meet face to face, to find joy in walking alone, to train the family puppy and really bond with him, to talk to my child during a school day and see the sides of him in school and with his friends that were unknown to me, and to sneak out for precious outdoor lunches to laugh with my husband and feel the sunshine on my face, until … the vaccine.
But the biggest gift 2021 gave me was to see where my true priorities should be. It has not been easy to stare them in the eye and admit to myself that maybe my sense of priorities was flawed, but again, once I did, it brought with it a new confidence and purpose.
Shaping my future not around others and around that behemoth called work, but around me and my family. Braving the cold to cheer my son on at soccer practice, relishing my mother’s homemade rasam and not dashing out the door right after, watching my husband as he started to fall in love with our puppy, and finally, listening to my son’s advice to write down all of those stories which I made up for him, centered around family, responsibility and his great passion, soccer, which I hope to publish for other children to enjoy.
New York, the financial center, bleak, desolate and eerily still through most of the first half of 2021, surged back to life in just a few short, vaccine-driven months. But I have chosen not to jump back into the open arms of the reawakened city.
So here I am, at the tail end of this chaotic year, in a still chaotic universe, having found my own order in it, my own pace, and most of all, my own peace. No matter what 2022 brings with it, I have re-anchored myself within myself, and come to terms with my own, inner entropy and how to harness it to live a more rewarding life, not to just exist…
Rama Balachandran is a New York-based attorney, mother, dancer and writer. She hails from a family of musicians, Bharatanatyam dancers and writers, and is grateful for her miracle son, supportive family, accomplished friends and her wonderful dance students. She grew up in the UK, India, New Zealand and Canada, and has traveled extensively. She is a proud South Indian and American and aspires to become a writer of children’s books. Her favorite genre is the short story, and her favorite number is 4.