It is late at night, and I have decided to rewrite my Year in Review post. I already wrote it – or wrote most of it. About 1,000 words or so of neat, happy little lines. Lines where I mentioned coyly that this or that was hard about the year. But I reread it, and felt like I wasn’t being very emotionally honest about everything. About the way that I felt. About the way that I still feel.
About the things I have learnt this year.
The thing is, hard years are difficult to learn from while you still live in them. It takes going back sometimes, to realize what you really need to know. What you need to keep from them. And what you need to discard.
I was going through one of my notebooks from 2017, from when I was still a teenager. I wrote about the heartbreaking confusion that was 2016. How the year broke me and poured me out and remodelled me (dramatic, I know ha-ha).
But reading through that notebook, I saw how honest I was about everything – both the good and the bad. And if I was unafraid to say the truth then, why be afraid now?
There is a verse from the Bible that says
Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.
I found that verse to be a hard pill to swallow. I have never liked it very deeply – since we are being honest here today.
To count suffering as joy. What a paradox. But hard as this year was for me, I think it might have allowed me to grow in some imperceptible way that I haven’t seen yet.
Or, maybe not imperceptible. That whole idea of learning to be patient while going through something hard, I think a year like 2016 did that for me. If I hadn’t had something like that –facing the stress of homesickness, medical school’s first turbulent year, and EVERYTHING, I don’t think I would have walked through this year with half as much poise. Half as much joy. Because, as hard as this year was. I don’t feel like I ever really despaired. I was oddly quite happy. I laughed way more this year than I have in my adult life.
Isn’t that a triumph in some way?
I survived this year. Because I had that assurance that just like before, I was able to live a full life. To experience joy despite everything.
And you know that thing too right? That no matter how bad a bad time is, they always end.
SO, WHAT WAS SO HARD ABOUT THE YEAR?
Many things. There is one BIG thing that cast a looming shadow over the year. That made it hard for me to concentrate on anything too deeply. I had the energy to do things just enough. Just well enough to be okay.
Because of that shadow, I found it hard for me to put my heart into anything –to follow through on plans that I had made earlier in the year.
And, I didn’t make as much money as I would have liked this year. And even though I published my writing, and got 4 times more awards and nominations than I did last year, I still feel like I could have done more. The fog around my brain from everything was just too much. ( I know I sound like a perfectionist here but these are my feelings, okay. Ha-ha).
I will bounce back though, that I am sure of.
Even with the way that I feel right now.
You know, maybe one day I won’t have to talk in this parable I am talking in. And we can discuss this BIG thing, but till then, there is one thing that also made my year hard to navigate. I am pretty comfortable with talking about that.
It’s about becoming a doctor this year – or rather, adjusting to becoming a doctor this year.
Being a doctor is very different from what I thought it would be like.
I mean, I expected it to be hard. I expected that the whole work-life balance thing would require some adjusting to. Some revision of how I work things
To my surprise, the thing that was hardest for me was keeping an emotional balance in my life in general. I am a pretty calm and steady person. But putting the lives of literal newborns in my hands was daunting. I had a huge amount of anxiety about missing some subtle, almost indecipherable sign that a baby was slipping away. And there were some nights where I was left alone to call the shots about resuscitating a baby. I cannot describe how emotionally exhausting that can be.
Oddly, when I got out of that unit that works on new-borns, so much of the old anxieties I had as a medical student about what kind of doctor I would be, vanished. I came to rely a lot more on my own judgment. And to trust it. Not think it is infallible, but to recognize that I do have a systematic way of thinking through problems, and it would be silly to bet against it. Always.
The other thing that was difficult for me, and it seems really small, is the fact that I didn’t really get that post-graduation experience that I had always dreamt of. I had a whole plan to do this or that after I graduated. To just have a quiet lull between when I graduated and when I started work. Take time to really think about what sort of future I wanted. Take time to reflect. To decide what I even wanted to write about. But because of that BIG thing, it all felt trivial. I needed to focus on what needed to be focused on.
Well, what are the things?
There could be a whole list of things. But why complain so much?
I said I was able to cling to joy this year. So, here are the ways I did so. The things that helped me.
LEARNING ABOUT MYSELF
I don’t know if I even had the time to learn a lot about myself.
I feel like it is a question that has already been answered so well in earlier years.
I remember back in 2021 or so, the question I wanted to answer about myself was what is Busayo even about?
I mean, with art, with writing, with philosophy, I was able to get a very nuanced idea of who I was. Yet, even with all of that deep soul-searching, I realized that I knew little about what I was. I mean, I didn’t feel so connected to the fact that I was this mostly boring, soft-spoken middle-class kid. After the pandemic ended, I think something just snapped inside of me. I realized there was nothing wrong with being just that. So I embraced it. And I think it did a lot more for me in some ways than exploring art ever did. I felt okay with just being myself.
I remember this quote from Maya Angelou’s book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Well, I will paraphrase it. She said something like not everyone survives their teen years. And I don’t think she meant to learn to survive them like remaining alive. But like remaining intact. Remaining okay with who you are in the world regardless of what anyone says about you. Or about what you should be like.
With that lesson learnt, I got to enjoy the freedom of not just being myself. But of being okay with myself. With both who and what I am.
Still, there is always going to be more work to be done.
LEARNING ABOUT OTHERS
I never really put my relationship with others in my Year in Review posts.
But it feels crucial this time. I have opened myself up quite freely and deeply to others. More than I ever have since I was a child probably.
And, it has been fun.
I have shared a lot of laughs with people. There is definitely a huge amount of merit to coming out of your shell; new friends, new experiences. A larger group of people to do life with. I wanted to make more friends this year. I’m pretty happy that I managed to achieve that. It seems small, but it is such a victory for me. I want to do it even more.
LEARNING ABOUT LIFE
For this, I wish I had some to share about life here. But I find I haven’t thought long enough about everything to have anything to offer. Due to yunno – everything. Ha-ha
And maybe sometimes – as I tell myself – all of that thinking doesn’t always helps so much.
There is one thing I did find surprisingly – and I am sure of it because I learnt it in the backdrop of everything else – that happiness is very easy to buy. Fulfillment isn’t.
Happiness is in a tub of ice-cream for me. A nice nap. Visiting a friend, or a walk in the evening.
Fulfillment, I got to feel that this year. And to feel a rather lasting form of it because I feel like I am doing what I was created to do. Despite everything else.
I mean, I have lasting fulfilment, maybe not the kind that you get from living a long, well-lived life, because I am still yet so young. But I feel like I have mostly done what I wanted to do with my life. Even if I now wonder what the plan is. What the next thing I will focus on will be.
I will discover it while finding happiness in a tub of ice cream.
LEARNING ABOUT WORK
I wrote a lot this year. A LOT
I have the links to prove it. Links on this blog to blog posts where I talk about writing. Where I wrote about creating 20 pieces or more in a writing workshop. Where I wrote about finding beauty in art.
About love being brave – and being fuel even in things as mundane as work.
And I still have so much to say. So much to create. I cannot wait to find the time – and heart- to do so.
I HOPE YOU ARE OKAY…
This year might have been great for you. And I am really happy for you if it was.
But in my country, I think this year was a lot. I was going to have my sandals fixed earlier and the shoemaker and his friend were chatting about how emotionally charged the crossover to the New Year will feel this time around. People will want to shed all of this off and hope for something better. And were are very good at hoping in this country. Even though I prefer we acted on that hope, rather than nurse it in our hearts and while chatting with friends
Well, at least we have Christmas to take the edge off. And truly, there is a New Year to look forward to. I will have some time off during this period. My first leave!
I am looking forward to celebrating, to taking time to reflect.
And taking time to write you the last piece of the year!
I hope that whatever this year has looked like for you, the rest of it brings you blessings. And peace.
Have a wonderful Christmas.
I will see you before the year runs out!
This gif includes Mariah Carey. She is the artist I listened to the most this year! And she has some really, really great Christmas albums.