Of Speeding cars,
And Flashing lights,
Of Nights of passion,
And abundant desire,
Of States of inebriation,
And Fluid emotions,
Sailing through life,
Rising as we fall,
Comfortably unaware,
Blindly we crawl,
And when nothing truly remains,
The realization befalls,
Of that that was found and lost,
Tears that melted away like frost,
Too late to perhaps redeem,
Lament over mistakes that went unseen.
It all began on new years’ eve,
Our home we decided not to leave,
Followed by a tedious term paper deadline,
Our body clocks we were forced to realign,
Disillusioned by results, marks we had not received,
Secluded in our apartment we lay, heart broken and slightly peeved,
Followed by desperate attempts to produce a better dissertation,
Times of confusion and endless bouts of procrastination,
Unable to focus on neither work nor play,
About this messy phase, I’d rather not say,
On the whole, the year was a total mess,
Memories that do nothing but depress,
More importantly, friends and foes were lost and found,
My world seems to have completely turned around,
Yet it seems life miraculously fell into place,
I’m forced to wonder, was it God’s grace?
The year is nearing towards an end,
Good wishes I hope the Lord will send,
In search of meaning and a goal,
On the journey called life, I continue to stroll…
Before I actually begin to write this, I must put out a disclaimer. That even though I recently turned 25 and the (premature) gray hair on my head suggest otherwise, I am a staunch believer of the phrase ’18 till I die’. In fact, every birthday I do a little jig and sing it aloud in the shower. Fine, I’m exaggerating; in fact I’m lying only to prove to you that I am not that old. In fact, I’m a kid at heart. I kid you not. But then again, who isn’t? My parents are in their 60s but sometimes I find them more childish than almost every kid I went to school with.
But the point is that there is something to being youthful, something that has little to do with how young you feel inside or how old you actually are but just with being inexperienced. Often, that has a lot to do with how old you actually are too, but then again it depends on what kind of experiences life threw at you. But just the mere idea of not knowing; not even knowing that you don’t really know…You are young and every time you hit a mile stone which seems like you are now a grown up, you raise your collar and walk all proud as though you’ve figured it all out and know everything that there is to know. For instance, the move from junior to senior school or may be when you get into college after school. You think of yourself as one of the smartest beings there ever was. You think your parents ‘know shit’ about the world today because they are from the times back then. You strut around the streets thinking nobody really knows what they’re doing but you actually do.
But as you grow older, you gradually lose all the pride and the smugness only to realize that you don’t really know much. Perhaps worse, you realize that not only do you not know but that you’ll never really know enough. Worst case scenario is the realization that you might know all you want; but none of it will actually protect you from the impending challenge called life. You’re forced to accept that the world is not as pleasant as you thought and perhaps never will be.
But truly speaking, unpleasant experiences aren’t all that bad if you think about what you learn, not just about life but about yourself. You may find inside you immense strength to battle everything and everyone around you, may be even yourself. The only thing worth reminiscing about is the loss of innocence. The innocence that lets you have faith in yourself and the world, the trust and affection with which you open heartedly embrace people around you without a thought, the pretty picture where except a few minor bumps, the world is rainbow colored and in every living being around you, you see a sprightly soul! Of all the things I lost on my way here, unfortunately that probably qualifies as an irredeemable loss.
