Welcome to 2024, the year that was! by Atul Singh

 It’s not a typo. I really mean 2024, the year that was, in past tense.

We understand time in linear fashion. A sequence of events that transpire one after another, in a neat little series of seconds and minutes laid out for us, that we hop into helplessly, ceaselessly… like during the hopscotch we played as kids. Sun rises, we step into hour one of our day, then another, then another… days and months, months and years… youth, old-age, death. Lifetime. 

The question to ponder though is, how much, if any, of the ensuing moment’s happenings come out of our volition and in how much of life’s happenings we just are mute observers and involuntary participants? Really, how much? A little? A lot? Do we create the next moment or merely step into it? 

Are we flowing into the gates of each moment like a journey through thousand gates of Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto, Japan where each moment is a pre-constructed Stupa and we just pass under it. Or, is it more like we are a being in a Cosmic ocean of trillions of moments next and pass through the one of our choosing, like a stream of water flowing, with each drop choosing its own path, based on where it fell, based on the gradient. May be we are like a snake on the jungle floor, choosing its path out of a billion-trillion choices at each moment based on where it wants to be. Or perhaps we are a spider spinning and spitting out the next footstool of a moment that we will step onto. Which one is it?

In other words, are we creators of our worlds or passers by. Does our mind manifest/create our reality or we breathe in and out our granted breaths, in some Super Being, read God’s, creation that exists all around us. Which one is it? 

Before we navigate ourselves to any answer, let’s recognize another dimension of the world we perceive is that it is not static. It is not a still picture on a canvass that we like ants, are crawling over, pixel by pixel, moment by moment. It is dynamic, ever changing, ever morphing into fantastical shapes, into gleeful screams of delight of a baby, into tortured breathing of a soldier choking in his own blood on the battlefield, into sexual ecstasy here, into a communal scream of intolerable pain of a million beings perishing together in a forest fire there, all happening simultaneously. Indeed the ant changes the pixel as it steps onto it also. Just as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle explained, the act of observing also changes the observation. Does it all happen at the behest of a giant orchestrator of all things, as we have been told who in his impenetrable, inscrutable wisdom crafts all outcomes or is each being spinning its own web and the Universe is a Giant web of webs interacting entangling, disentangling at magnificent scale, with probabilities driving outcomes along side our intent. Really which one is it and to what extent?

Yet again, before our predisposition to posit simplified views of reality jump in, let’s consider another aspect of of our perceived reality. We perceive the world through our five senses namely taste, touch, smell, sight and sound. Let’s go into a cave for a moment and start turning off each sense one by one. The eyes are shut, the world just lost all its color and shape. Let’s turn off the touch, our skin goes numb and all sense of hot and cold and remaining shapes is gone. Ears are shut now and no more sound exists, then smell, then tongue goes numb. And so we sit in this cave. What is the world now? All it’s granularity is gone. Will we know it exists? Perhaps we will. The observer, the conciousness that powers all the senses has not left the body. So we may know something? But what? 

We may know the existence of a giant blob of a Universe that we are part of and that is indeed part of us. I suspect we may “feel” like a drop of water in the ocean. What would a drop feel being in an Ocean? It is hard to know. Can a drop feel anything? 

Now, as we turn the senses back on, we may realize that our senses were the ones giving color, texture, taste to the world all along. No two people will smell the cave air the same way, no two people will feel the cave temperature the same way, as their senses get turned on. 

So does this analogy extend to the happenings of the world too? Do we create our reality? Are we a spider after-all? A spider of moments next.

It is hard to know for sure. I suspect that we are, to a much greater extent than we know and recognize. Perhaps we are indeed the creators of our destiny. And that destiny includes all moments yet to be, including each one in 2024, does it not?

So we may be chewing in our thought saliva the entire happenings of 2024 as we speak. Our fears and desires may well be crafting, synthesizing, constructing every footstool of moment next that we will step onto, every minute color and detail of the world we will pass through, or, well…cast in 2024. It may well be a world that we will spin in our minds and then live through.

If that is so, then, can we add a dollop of prosperity here, the rich hue of compassion there and the pastels of kindness and gratitude there, on the far side of our canvass. Can we manifest good health and success? Can we? Not just for us, but for the world. Like the phrase “Vasudev Kutumbhkam”, the world is our village says. Perhaps we can. We have the “toolika” i.e. the paintbrush indeed of our imagination. It is how we wield it. Will we wield it gingerly or with confidence, tentativeness or with certitude. You see, there are other paintbrushes too that are interfacing with ours. Which color sticks will depend on the power with which it is wielded. So let’s do it like we mean it, shall we.

And so, in either case, 2024 is a foregone conclusion. Whether we shall be a traveller interacting and passing through it or more likely a Spider and will live in the physical realm the world we are spinning in our minds right now. 

And so, Welcome to 2024, the year that was!!