Phases of life
Phases of life
how often do we reboot, revise, restore, refresh, transform?
Recently I read a blog post from one of the newsletters I subscribe to called “A learning a day”. Rohan looks at every year of his life as a version and this got me thinking. It is not as if we become a “new” version on our birthday like clockwork. Things change in various phases and each phase could be potentially called a “Release” and within each phase, there are multiple significant sub-releases too.
Let’s give my life a try…
Phases as stages of life from a learning and work perspective - finishing school, university, my first job, a decade-plus of software entrepreneurship, then working for the global software outsourcing industry, and then subsequently working as a consultant (or coach) in North America. This could be extended by job changes, specific consulting contracts, and engagements, promotions, firings, etc. to have a more version-centric picture.
Phases of life when you look it from a social and family perspective - my childhood and youth, my adult stage, my marriage and time with my wife, the birth and growth of my children, my children growing older, and the reverse integration of my in-laws in our lives here in Canada with us. To this, one could add other major births, marriages, and deaths in the family to extend it further.
Phases of life from a location perspective - my early life in India until I decided to leave it for good, my first location switch in India to Bangalore, my first year in the US (Dallas, TX and Columbus, OH), our move to Singapore, our move to the US a second time (New York, NY and San Francisco in the Californian Bay area), our immigration to Canada with early life in Fredericton, NB and the subsequent move to Burlington, ON (in the Greater Toronto Area). These phases could have individual sub-releases if one counted the number of actual houses we lived in - and that includes the houses we rented and the houses we owned (and sold).
Phases of life from a health perspective - my early years, obesity from the teen years until losing significant weight after carrying it for over nearly 4 decades, a lifetime of struggle with ADD and OCD, the onset, and nearly a lifetime of struggle with my Type 2 diabetes, my struggles with obstructive sleep apnea and the victory over it (mostly) due to the extreme weight loss, and my recently identified problems with my heart arteries that need surgery soon.
When I merge all these phases into an integrated picture, a bigger pattern of life emerges - with the true major releases and minor sub-releases that changed one’s lives.
I do know that the surgery scheduled in 10 days would be a major release in my life. My life is impactfully changed by it one way or other. It is a forced unprepared release that told me “Ready or not, here I come” and but within those constraints, I am glad that my arterial problems with my heart were identified before any major event that perpetuated a more dynamic response. And as another human, like any other in the species, I am encoded with the hope that helps perpetuate us. And I hope with this hope that I am destined to some more phases in my life before its eventual sunset.