THE PERPETUAL ENIGMA OF CHANGE
Time rolled by. Maintaining a polite masquerade of
innocence, it has subtly been chipping its way through without respite;
reworking and reshaping everything that came its way, with no exceptions
whatsoever. Whether they happened to be my aspirations, likes or dislikes, my hopes,
priorities or the choices I made, the circumstances I've had to face, or the
people around me, everything has just been in thrall, right from the very
beginning. A victim, in this mute memoir that life itself has been reciting all
along and always will, till the end of time. And behind the self created and
self imposed bars of routine confinement, within this flowing time, we rarely
realize how much we miss every day, with every passing second of our lives. And
it's really not until you take a step back, and take cognizance of who you were
and who you've become along the way. 'You've changed so much' --is probably the
biggest cliché, when it comes to social gatherings, and for me this has always
fuelled introspection, and helped me glance back at my antecedents to get a
better understanding of whether this change extends beyond just the physical
demarcations.
When you see someone your age, with an unusual dexterity or some distinctive attribute that makes him/her unparalleled in that field, whether it's an artist or a famous author, an orator or a poet or maybe someone with a great physique, the very first thing that we consciously register is their deviation from the regular normalcy. And, in the process of trying to figure out what could've caused this contrasting difference, is where our prudence fails. Because we simply fail to grasp the very fundamental law that governs this final outcome.
I believe that every saint and fiend who've ever existed, always have had one thing in common, they were born alike. It was the course of seemingly inconsequential events they had to endure throughout their lives, which wired them into who they are, and that’s what makes us look at them as two different beings. Yes, we might have had some innate predilections when we were young, which might have given us an edge over others in some areas, but the very base that we start off with has always been exactly the same for each and every one of us. An intricate statue carved out of a stodgy piece of rock was always there. It was just what was chipped out, that makes it look like the way it is. It's really what we 'leave' behind through the course of time, that decides what we end up having at the end.
It's what is taught to us, what we invest in, what we aspire to be like, what we've had to face in our lives, that makes our paths so different. And once you reach a point, where you fully understand what it takes for a change to happen for betterment. And that the change you want to see is really up to you. Once you understand, that not everybody will join you, that not everybody will have the vision, and that even if no one else sees it for you, you must see it for yourself. When you go beyond the fear of failure, and start investing in yourself; you would witness, the true magnitude of your potential. When you are willing at any moment of time, to sacrifice what you are, for what you will become, you would eventually understand that you don't have to go through your life being a victim. When you strive to become an individual; when you struggle to become the person you were created to be; when you 'define' the change you want to see and your belief resonates with the possibility of this change, you start living a life where changes happen for a reason, a life where things are not just on auto pilot; a life where 'you're' running the day, the day's not running you. That would be the kind of change that I seek.
But the story takes a sudden precipitous fall, when you get caught up in the daily hiccups of life and succumb to your circumstances, 'before' reaching that threshold of maturity, where you can truly appreciate your raw potentials and your mind's own infinite nature. I believe, everyone of us was given a 'lorry' when we came to this world, a means to fling past the tough times that we were to face, through the journeys ahead of us. But, just like any two leaves of a tree, no two lorries were the same. Some could move swiftly while there were others, which hardly moved at all. Drowning in a sense of lack, unhappiness and bias, the unfortunate ones struggled. Inch by inch they dragged their lorries, as the others swooshed past them. They were rendered autodidacts, left alone in their cosmos of sufferings. Some had the luxury of the right guidance and were strong enough to reach up to the threshold and take control of their lives, and be the change they wanted to see in the world. While the others, unaware of their true potentials, sought for easier means to make their lives less painful, ways which were not always right.
Every noble, thief or a delinquent, every face that there is to see, has a story to tell of the path of changes that it has undergone. When a murderer is killed, for the greater good of the society, when you are left with no choice, but to take away the life of the living, you destroy more than just a person who did wrong. I think, somewhere along the line, you kill a soul that never found the right lorry, and that is a failure on 'our' part. You teach something to live a certain way all its life, and when you hit a dead end, you kill it for what it has become for you simply don't know what to do with it anymore. I don't think you cure the disease by killing the diseased. The cure lies deep within, the cure lies in understanding the problem first. If there's water leaking in your house, you don't just keep clearing water off the floor, you fix the damn pipe. We look at the result, the outcome, because that is the easiest to see and judge, instead of understanding the 'reason' behind the change and killing the 'cause'. And so in this war of good and evil, to seek justice, I believe, it's actually the humanity that looses every time.
It's not where
you start or where you finish in life, it's the distance that you travel that
really matters. When you see someone who overcame the odds and 'changed' his
life for betterment, stop; put your hands together for him; give credit where
it's due; remember the name of that person, for one day he might be an
inspiration for someone doubting himself; someday he might be an inspiration
for 'you'. Yes, it’s hard to change your life, but it's necessary to know that
tough times have not come to stay, they have come to pass. Lend a helping hand
to someone who needs it. Show them that they have the strength to overcome whatever
that is they're facing. Make them smile and let them know that you care. I
guess, there is no one variable to the equation of change. We make new variables
as we go along. Change is inevitable. But to make this change count, we need to
understand that we are an uncommon breed with unimaginable potentials. And
we'll never know the limit of our possibilities until we charter the waters of
the 'impossible'.
