Looking Through the Invisibility

Through joy, love and boundless ecstasy, through pain, agony and pangs of separation, through 21 years of my eventful existence I have learnt how life functions. Not a master of the art of living, but I have learnt more than just a little.. And the more I learn, the more aware I become that what I know is only the beginning. The beginning of acceptance of the intangible, impalpable yet extant mysteries of life; the inexplicable, densely elaborate and yet intricately woven cobwebs that we all are housed within.

Of all I learnt, the most excruciatingly difficult were the lessons of acceptance. Possibly because before I learnt to accept the rest of the world the way it is, I had to accept myself the way I was, the way I am, and the way I probably will be for the rest of my life. To see the world in gray, with no clear distinction of black or white requires a soul deep and brave; one that has been through the extremities of life; situations of life that you and I wouldn’t want to find ourselves in. while extending gratitude for the gift of good fate, it is also essential for you and I to learn these lessons from people that have seen enough to teach.

The world isn’t perfect, neither am I. unfortunately for me, it took me one too many instances to learn that. To embrace the fact that people are different, to understand the people that are different, to comprehend that there could be a heart-wrenching, nerve wrecking story behind the beautifully sculpted elusive smiles on their faces, and the eyes that once gleamed of joy and hope are now dry because one too many tears of silence and sorrow have already been shed, takes time; it requires an elegance of the heart that only a few have. Achieving such depths in soul might take a lifetime of comprehension, but it is our responsibility to strive towards such elegance. All we see of a stranger, and sometimes sadly of our closest associations is what is skin-deep. More often than not we refuse to look within them, and to see beyond what they portray,  just as the resistance we show in shedding our own masks.

 I’m convinced that if all of us take just a moment; stop being judgmental for the tiniest fraction of a second and rekindle the already extant courage within us to embrace their worlds just as easily we embraced ours, we would all have different stories to tell. Stories devoid of hatred, pain, abuses and differences.. differences that shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and if extant by fate or accidents of birth, differences that we as human beings should not have let grow; differences of social status, wealth, opportunities, abilities and sometimes even the very chance to live by choice.

I’ve learnt that there’s innate beauty in empathy; in largeness of heart to accept and love.  That it is okay to enjoy the gift of destiny, to be able to go to a pricey restaurant and savour the customized dishes waiting for you as long as you do not refuse to look beyond its glass doors to see in the eyes of the ill-clad man how disadvantageously he wishes to forge ahead through just one more day. I hope someday, we can all be the hope in the eyes of many like him. That we can all, in our own little ways, curb the hunger of at least one person a day.

Life’s has not been very easy; no one ever said it is going to be. With boundless happiness, i have also known limitless pain. But knowing pain, i learnt it is not always destructive.  There’s also constructive pain; it solely depends on the sufferer in what direction life moves forward after having been halted for a while.

Then there’s love, and the vulnerability that comes along with it. Being vulnerable is a beautiful thing; to give your heart away to a stranger without knowing in entirety what the future holds. Love is an amalgam of all things beautiful in a single entity- courage, hope, optimism, nostalgia and the sudden surges of melancholy. You can be wrong in love, you can make mistakes, over and over again, and sometimes still not learn, because for once you are letting your heart speak, for once you're listening to only what the heart has to say. Love can break you, shatter you beyond repair, destroy you. But give it that one chance, because while it lasts, it IS beautiful. There's pain associated with love at all times; may sorts of it. The pain of separation,  the changing wavelengths, the stings of possession.. the pangs of separation will eat you alive each day, but when it does, let it.  Let it claw deep into your soul and bring alive the romantic in you- the writer, the artist, the poet. While love lasts, it will complete you, like nothing else ever did, like nothing ever possibly can!

Love might not always be a presage of  better times ahead. It will end, and when it does it will kill you. the parts of you that you didn't know existed will ache in agony. Pieces of you will sing melancholy ragas that you can't harmonize into compositions. When nothing makes sense, let them be. Give things time, and just be. Because there's nothing more divine and more pristine as the very ability to love- the very concept of risking all you ever had in hope of achieving all you'd ever want!

*to be continued*