Balancing That Sheet.

At the end of a fiscal year, people get busy with their accounts. Companies come out with their balance sheets and the general public gets busy filing their taxes and declaring their income. No matter how organized we are, there is always a check to be done to ensure we have not missed anything.

I have not particularly enjoyed my accountancy classes. But I like the concept of a balance sheet and the way the amount always balances (that is, if we have got our numbers right). We bring some amount from the previous year, we earn some during this year and we take forward some into the next year. There are some fixed assets which depreciate over the years but still forms the strong base for the business. There are new investments, shareholders, miscellaneous items as well as a provision to write off some items. All these make a perfectly balanced sheet.

How about a balance sheet of our life at the end of a calendar year? The left side will consist of our strengths, our well wishers, our achievements and accolades, our gains in terms of experiences and relationships, time spent on increasing our talent and expanding our horizon, lessons learnt, new people who have come and enriched our life, some old friendships and relations that have been revived, new activities that we have started,  bucket list items that have been ticked off, etc. How much we have evolved as a person will be a sum total of all these.

The right side will consist of our weaknesses,  losses in terms of people who left us, bitter experiences, time spent on undeserving people and unnecessary activities, relationships that have turned bitter, activities that had to be stopped, hobbies that we lost interest in, misunderstandings that we never cared to clear, people who we let go, opportunities that we lost, things that we had to sideline in order to achieve our dreams, time that we could not spend with loved ones etc. How much we have to further work on ourselves, will be a sum total of all these.

Some fond memories that have been captured in our minds will be carried forward to the next year.

Some bad incidents and people will be written off. They will find place in the learnings from experiences and be referred to when we find ourselves in similar situations. 

I have always found the miscellaneous aspect in the balance sheet very interesting. It has come handy when I tried to balance the accounts of the XYZ Company during my exams. A small deficit here and there would get adjusted into the miscellaneous account. Similarly in the balance sheet of our life, there will be some experiences that are beyond our understanding and comprehension. Such aspects are best left unanswered under the miscellaneous heading.

One important aspect here is that the sheet always balances. Lessons learnt from failures balance the failure. And people we had to let go because we were running behind our success balances our achievements. There is always something that we gain when we fail and something that we leave behind when we succeed.

Now, it is time to move forward, to make new estimates, to draw new plans and to open a new balance sheet. May the carry overs from the previous year strengthen you and help you achieve newer heights in the coming year. May you be able to maintain a healthy balance in the balance sheet of life.