As each mommy will vouch for , the one time every child is bound to say something important , something that just cannot wait another second to be said , is when you are in the bath battling with shampoo suds in your eyes .....right at that moment , the door will go bang and a yelp .....MAaaaa .....
not now nandita , later , i yelled back to my six year old
no ma ....i have to tell you something important !
what?? , the resigned to habit me ....
i wish i had a life .
There was a silence from my side for a minute , while i considered if i had heard her right ....so she repeated it ....i wish i had a life ....
oh....hmm.....let me finish my bath, come out and then we can talk about this ?
are you mad at me ma ? is life a bad word ?
no ...not at all , the corners of my mouth lifting of their own accord at the sweet sweet innocent irony of her questions......
Without getting into the semantics of what inspired her question, and trust me ...semantics are important...on most days...just like my ellipses....there are entire novels , lifetimes sometimes woven between those semantics and ellipses ...today....i'd rather focus on life itself . Its been on my mind for a few weeks now ....life and its lessons ....the bigger picture so to speak . Most days , focusing on the bigger picture renders within me huge amount of comfort ....on days like today.....i doubt if there is actually a bigger picture in existence or if its simply a concoction of our minds and hearts and if life is in the details , the small stuff we tell ourselves not to sweat about .
Besides i've been wanting to write....its a perfect wintery morning , the sorts that leads you to the hammock under the kiwi tree and chew on pencil ends and trudge through that atlas of impossible by daylight musings . Also when your bff tells you softly that it would be nice if you blogged ....you kind of know deep down , where its coming from.....
Last few months have been about some major changes on all levels for me and without design they have shifted the plates , the terrain and the marrow of me . The impact has been fairly intense but thats okay.....intensity i can handle , its the lukewarm...halfhearted that has always scared me.....intensity to me is synonymous with life....so i am okay with the changes ....yes, there have been moments when i have literally sat down and sobbed my heart out but like my favorite jane austen line .......
"There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me."
the " others " here may and does denote time , situations , scenarios , mindsets , prejudices and people .....always people .....
and of course now another line has become a favorite .....hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting....from barack obama's acceptance speech.....
I've learned that life is going to teach us lessons every day , especially those we do not want to learn , ...There will be times when just like the people who matter most .....life will let us down and there's a lesson in there too .....things that matter the most , convictions and values that held greatest significance will fall away of their own accord , undergo changes and make way for new ones.....the frames of life will seldom be in focus, the light always wrong and pixelation all grainy and yet......in all the years to come ......we will look at them with the full weight of our love for the moment when that frame was made .
I've come to love a term ...." slow exposure " ....
I've come to love my fumbling slow yet sure steps to what i no longer feel scared or shy to term as " my dreams essential to my being alive "
I've come to love the overwhelming naked intensity with which i view these dreams......intense , sensitive yet so pregnant with potential that it terrifies me ...yet i love it...
I've come to love this feeling of feeling/being challenged ....i WANT to feel absolutely flagrantly challenged , pit the very marrow of me against the challenge and earn that glow...bask in it...the sweaty adrenalin ridden glow that comes from having overcome it ....
And i've come to love the sadness too....that sometimes envelopes me and almost always passes....yet again reflecting ...refracting life....
Life...wherein you wake each morning....at that precise moment when a slanting sliver of sun's hazel ray travels over and across your eyes...you wake with that childlike wonder intact and faith in all that is yet to unfold ....and know finally that it will always be that picture [ after you've been yelled at for not turning off the bracketing feature ] ....that picture, that moment , that phase, that month .......the one you didn't plan for ...but felt within your bones so deep , that it ended up becoming that very same life lesson i talked about earlier....
....that one... will always be your favorite ....and help you keep the courage of your young unsophisticated naked self in tow....
Is life a bad word ?
hell no...not one bit....
~o0o~
