Happiness Never Follows A Straight Path

Happiness Never Follows A Straight Path
I saw her footsteps in the sands of time behind me. She was like a sweet dream I had seen last night, but it is going to be some time before I can forget it. There was everything I liked in the dream, right from a lot of sweet babies to a great life for me. The dream was screaming to be realised into reality. I couldn’t do a lot to make it come true; a large part of it depended on my fate. Practically, my life is dominated by my destiny. Very little has been in my purview.

Fate is an entity not in my powers, it follows its own pattern of movement, so it can never be said if a particular dream is to come true or when it is to come true. The very concept of any of my dreams coming true has not been in my powers. I can only hope for the best dreams to come true as soon as possible. I can only hope things turn out the way I want them to, and the way I think they should turn out. I can only hope the future is something like what I have idealised it to be. The problem is my fate rarely makes me do things the way I want things to happen, or the way I want to do things. There is very little I can do to visualise the future I have idealised in my mind in a concrete form before me. I shiver when I think the tomorrow of my dreams may never ever come.

The truth is that very few of us get all we aim for. Most of us aim for a lot of things in life, but we rarely get everything we aimed for in life. A lot of our dreams and aspirations remain the dreams and aspirations they were. They fail to see the light of the day, and the story doesn’t go beyond the story-board. The caricatures drawn on the board remain in the format they were. Quite a few of our dreams remain confined to our eyes, or vanish as soon as we open our eyes. Capturing these dreams in a concrete form is the need of the hour.                                         

The problem can be solved amicably if we don’t open our eyes, but this is going to mean living with our eyes closed. You are most likely to be hit by a speeding car or another automobile on the road if you keep your eyes closed while walking on the road. This is what I was doing, and this is what I would have done if a jolt had not opened my eyes. The only solution is to open our eyes as soon as possible, not bother about the dreams that fly off, and face the world bravely.

A very important purpose served by these dreams is that they have been instrumental in propelling me to my goal like a rocket-booster pushes a rocket into outer space. My goal is at a very far off distance, further than the farthest planet, and it may take a long time before I get there. On the other hand, the goal might even be round the corner.  I don’t have to go very far off now. One of the problems has been the ambiguity my goal has been surrounded with. I don’t know where I’m headed. I can only dream of having got to my goal, and even beyond. I hope I get where I’m headed for.

Dreaming should be done only till a particular point of time in life. Once the realities of life settle in, you should stop dreaming and should focus on the real world. It is the realities of life that are to be faced and this is how all battles of life are to be won. Once the realities of life settle in, they form a team to pull hard against all the dreams one has seen in his or her life, and ultimately win the tug-of-war.

The real battle that is to be won is fought between happiness and despair in our life. The balance always tilts towards one the ends connoting negative emotions. The dominance of negative emotions in our lives is so much that happiness is sidelined and ignored probably because there is nothing definite about the way happiness moves. Happiness is quite like a knight in a game of chess; it seems to move in a straight line, but strikes in its own typical manner. Happiness is almost like a horse; horses usually don’t know the values of moving in a straight line. Happiness jumps to a side whenever it can.

I went through a  phase of happiness in my life when she was with me, but, like horses, happiness didn’t follow a consistent trajectory for a long time. I was a host to happiness while she rung all sorts of bells in my life. It was the most vibrant music I had ever heard, but all of it was history now. I love reading history, but I would have to browse through the annals of my own history now. The sands of time that had her footsteps have to be preserved before they slip from my grip. I braced myself to tighten my fists, and blood rushed through my fingers and my palm with greater velocity and ferociousness than ever before, but all my efforts went into the gutter.

There is no way I can hold the flow of time. The sands of time are to flow out of my hands, and form a sand-dune near my feet. The impressions of her feet are to find a place with the sand-dune at my feet. I shall always miss the time when we were together, but happiness, like the horse, never follows a straight path.