Standing At The Edge

Standing At The Edge
Looking at her was quite like looking at a skyscraper while standing on the ground floor of an adjacent building. She was larger than life for me. I jumped up into air when I realised I had finally discovered her, she   stood taller than all of my contemporary problems. All of them were solved. This was where I was supposed to find quite a bit of myself, but her discovery made me feel like I had lost myself.  

Quite a bit of me was to be found in the jungle of concrete that was before me, but before that I had to find my real self.  I had to have a clear concept of the world around me too. The lenses of my glasses were frosted with mist, and it did matter a lot for I had to look at the world around me with an objective eye. The lenses of my glasses had to be cleaned.

I could feel the warmth of life as it unfurled itself symbolising all occupants of the skyscraper I saw through my lenses. The mist on my glasses was all set to wither off thanks to the heat of civilisation in the building. Although the skyscraper before me stood tall and mighty in front of me, there were quite a few people living in it, and I knew not all of them were happy.

Somehow, I know everyone around me is not happy. Even she, the one I idealise and almost worship, isn’t happy. Somehow, I know I’m not wrong in my conjectures; everyone in this world breathes almost an identical quantity and quality of air, but all of us are satisfied with different amounts of happiness.

 All of us want different ends. All of us make efforts pointed in different directions to get to the same end, to be happy. This way, all of us strive for different ends and end up at different ends, but not all of us are happy. The truth remains that there stands a different level at which either of us can be and are satisfied. Very few of us ever reach the ideal height we have in our minds. This difference is what makes up the utter diversity of our world.

All of us aim for a different zenith in our lives, and all of us achieve different heights even while we walk on the same ground. There is not a single defined height that makes all of us contended or that suits all of us. There is always a variable present in our individual definitions of happiness and even in our perception of this difference.

This variable is precisely what defines all of us as different individuals. Although it appears to be a petty matter, it is factually an important entity defining our entire lives and all those involved in it. Those who are unable to get to their ideal height have to be contended with wherever they get to and this can be quite frustrating. It is important to get what you like or you will have to put up with whatever bits and bytes of happiness that come your way.

Happiness is an entity all of us strive for, but the truth remains that only a few of us manage to get it in its pristine form. The amount of happiness each of us gets differs with varying parameters of our efforts and a lot banks on our destiny, but whatever happiness we get always appears to be less than what we bargained for.

Most of us have to be content and happy with whatever wee bit of happiness we get. The striking beauty of this is that none of us is satisfied with what we have, all of us strive for it, and this is what keeps the world around us ticking. At the end of the day, all of us want more than what we get from our lives.

Throughout our lives we make efforts to be happy, we always want to be more happy than whatever bit is inscribed in our destinies; some of us do get a bit more of it. We always want more of it, and even more of it. We live every single day of our lives making efforts to get more of happiness.

It is quite pathetic that most of our efforts end up as failures and we can’t do anything about our failures. It gets all the more frustrating when our repeated efforts to be happy end up in failures and frustrations.

Throughout our lives, we wander about alleys of a forbidden city in the hope of reaching a definite goal one day, but most of us can’t get to it. Those who do get to it are really quite fortunate. They stand taller than everyone else.

The other building I saw through my glasses was certainly quite tall and mighty, but it’s grandeur was toned down by flaws over the lens of my glasses created by an incumbent spell of bad weather. It has been raining heavily.

I find myself running for shelter for I don’t even have an umbrella to shield myself from the rain and hail. Rumbling clouds raised me from my slumbers in the morning today. Similar warning-bells have been ringing all throughout my life, but I never paid heed.

I do have some regrets, but I don’t think I could have done much to help myself. It  has always seemed to be the first morning of my life, quite like the time when I was born. I ventured out of my house despite all the warnings, and found a heavy and dark sky above me.

 A deep dark pervasiveness prevails over me while I look at the skyscraper. There is a sun out in the horizon, but it can’t alleviate an inch of the darkness. I can feel the skyscraper I am in crumbling to the ground. Life is crumbling around me: it is coming to an end. I am so close to the edge.

I might tip over and fall.