Life, when left unbridled becomes a chore unloved. One needs to keep revisiting one’s past in order to make sense of one’s present and aspire for future. The problem that I face continuously is to strike a balance between admiration of what’s gone and desire to bring it back. To be able to do it all over again. I am losing it, time is running out, I am getting old with each passing day and that scares the shit out of me.
I have made some lousy decisions in life. I started this blog ten years ago when blogging was still in it its infancy but was never regular. My younger daughter had just been born when I started this journey that I thought I’d nurture and take to new heights….. Now my son is the same age and ten years have gone by in between.
Whatever I am doing in life now does not even come close to what I thought I would achieve in these ten years. It is nothing as compared to what I could do. And it mocks all the dreams I dreamt for myself while staring out of that window in my living room.
I was going to be a great writer. My pieces were to get published in literary magazines. I was going to master the art of writing.
And yet, ten years passed and I am still here. Still at the cross roads, never launched. What happened? Where did time—that culprit— vanish? Why did I waste it so willingly?
These are the questions I may never find answers to, yet the only questions I’d want answered.
In a systematic manner, I brought this on myself. Yes, I do realise my mistake. I thought I had time; that I could do it tomorrow. Little did I know, then, that that perfect tomorrow would never come.
If I really wanted to do something, I should’ve started right when it came to mind. When I had decided that I was going to be a writer. I did have the time, I do have time even now, but a sad, unproductive decade lies between the dreams when they were first dreamt and now that they have to be woken up again.
These dreams are now frail, unsure of their strength of ever coming true. They are still there, yes, very much alive, but they’ve grown old, tired and weary. They’ve got unsure of themselves. And it is quite the task now to start from where I left.
Time will not wait for anyone, as clichéd as it may sound. This is one reality that I am aware of but have failed to understand in its entirety, no matter how much I tried. I live day in and day out thinking I’d do it tomorrow. I’d write that blog post tomorrow, I’d update that Instagram account tomorrow. I’d just sleep in today and then tomorrow will be a brand new day.
One just doesn’t realise the absurdity of time until it’s too late. And yes, age sneaks up on you when you’re least expecting it. It has this weird way of catching you off guard. And you just do not understand what really happened.
There’s no way of understanding, you just realise one fine day that you’re getting old, and that the time to act is now. Or you’ve lost it forever.
But I do realise that I do not want to imagine myself writing another blog post like this in another ten years. I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and tell myself that I did my best. And that is all one can do. Everything else is just life as it happens… but you should be able to die with the knowledge that you did do your best.
So here I am, trying to wake up the dreams that were never realised, to muster up the little strength that’s still left, to reignite the passion that is now tired, and to believe in the power of love again.
Featured Image courtesy: HERB
