I found these three sights in our garden which t urned helpful to prepare me for the closure of the year 2021. One fruit bearing aracnut tree is drying up prematurely. The mango tree is full of tender leaves suggesting that it is flowering season. The papaya tree is with its fruits.
This is nature's message to us if we care to pause and reflect on! Life has its span, but can be shortened by unexpected events. While we live we are to be living sharing the goodness that we are bestowed with. Our lives become a resource of encouragement and refreshment for others.
Looking back into 2021, I get a sense of how some aspirations I carried for the tenth year of the department where I work, got reduced or dried up due to difficulties that cropped up by internal and external factors. The internal factors of discord, the type of which I had not experienced in 40 year of my professional work, consumed my attention and I felt drying up of energy and enthusiasm.
Amidst the struggle to live beyond that emotionally disturbing scene came some new initiatives from colleagues in the department to revive the purpose of the department. The clinical service is now changing into a digital platform with more clear and simple protocols for developmental appraisal and follow up of children. The publishing of Buds to Blossom for developmental observations of children from birth to five years and the two other publications under editing, Following a child and Upbuilding a child came at a time when we needed much encouragement. I consider these publications as fruits of the last 40 years of a parent centred Neuro-developmental support system, which we have actively pursued through the initiatives at ASHIRVAD Christian Concern for Child care at Chennai, Nagpur, Vellore, Pondicherry and now at Kolenchery.
A dry tree, tree with tender leaves and another tree with fruits symbolise for me the panorama of the last forty years from 1982, when the first thought of a journey in to Child Development services had dawned on us.
The year 2022 would be also the 25 the year of partnership with CMC Vellore since the Developmental Paediatrics Unit was established in 1997 at CMC Vellore by ASHIRVAD incorporating its Child Development Centre functioning at Chennai since 1983.
All of us live with such a mixture of realities- dried up aspirations which could not be fully realised, hope and aspirations which are still alive and worth pursuing and some aspirations and pursuits bearing fruits!
I confess that I keep looking at the dried up tree. What is one dried tree in a garden of three hundred trees living and flourishing! And yet sometimes we are not able to take off our eyes of the one tree that dried up. This is a self defeating orientation.
What invites me as I summarise the year 2021 is to take delight in the tree with tender leaves and the tree with fruits.
I have had a habit for a while now, since retiring from CMC Vellore in 2008 to summarise each week to encourage myself to stay looking at the promising experiences and hope giving outcome of the little that might have been possible for that week.
It is a good practice to promote our personal wellness by inwardly dwelling on what can sustain our calling! It is one sure way of subsuming the disappointments and staying absorbed in all the possibilities which are still left with us.
A mother who visited yesterday to announce the good news of the next pregnancy mentioned to me that, 'I feel good that I had all the time to give my son who needed help for the last eight years'. She referred to her son who still have a few Neuro-developmentla needs. I felt overwhelmed with the hope and cheer she communicated.
Our life is a journey travelling through deserts and green pastures. One can agonise over the desert experience or stay glad with the experiences of having been through the green pastures.
It is good to get friendly with all the seasons in our lives as each season has its richness to bring cohesion to our lives!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
