An Endless Road Before Me

 

An Endless Road Before Me
I find myself looking into infinity as I stand before a long and endless stretch of road. The interminable nature of the track before me fails to deter me. It is a very long and weary road before me, I know, but I move on.

 

The way the path before me looks at me sends shivers down my spine; I wonder if it feels the same way when I look at it. A typical novelty associated with it pulls me to it, but there is also a fear of the unknown that pulls me back. A part of me wants to go back to my comfort-zone:  I don’t want to tread on an unknown path.

 

The truth of the matter is that I don’t have an option but to move on. I have to walk on and I have to keep walking on it for a long time. My pedestrian adventures are going to exhaust me, I know, but I don’t have an option.

 

The road before me is littered with countless thorns and rocks, it is going to be quite difficult for me to move on, but I don’t have a choice. I often wonder in what form the choice would have manifested itself in had there ever been a choice.

 

Life rarely gives any options. I am being pushed by an unknown force. Second thoughts convince me I’m better off when  I don’t have any options.

 

All of a sudden, I become conscious of a thousand odours in the air around me. Some are sweet and pleasant, while many of them are not pleasing to my olfactory senses.

 

Each odour connects to a trillion hopes, joys, wishes and thoughts that had once been through me. They conjured many dreams I saw with my eyes open, and many more I saw with my eyes closed.

 

I don’t dream the same dreams now, many of them became irrelevant like the toys I used to play with. I do have  a lot of aspirations still throbbing wildly within me today.

 

They make the odours appear quite lucrative. The track before me sends quite a few symbols and signs too: at least a few of my dreams might come true if I walk on the track before me.

 

A third thought forces me to make  an about-turn for none  of these thoughts, memories,  or even joys are relevant today. They have outlived their utility. Had they become alive and vibrant  while I was moving towards the road, I would have jumped with joy.

 

I’ve learnt an important lesson: life always gives all those joys we wish for, but the gifts usually arrive when they have outlived their utility. They are quite like the toys I used to play with in my childhood.  I wonder what became of them.

 

I should have preserved them for Zeenat, but I don’t think I would like to repeat everything that happened in my childhood; every drop of joy brought with itself an ocean of misery. Her life will be different from mine.

 

I often wish I could be a child once again, I wish I could go back to the time when these toys were significant, when they gave wee bits of happiness that remained relevant for at least a short while.

 

I wish I could share the feeling Zeenat is going to have when she holds a toy in her hands for the first time. I wish I could relive that short while of happiness and satisfaction.

 

The short time lasted more than the eternity I am out to discover on the road before me today.

 

There was so much novelty to be discovered at that time, there was so much time to make all discoveries. I wonder where all the time went, and how did the novelty of life fade off.

 

Only small bytes of joy were sufficient to propel satisfaction within me at that time.

 

The endless road before me defines another byte of short-lived happiness for me. It is, but it is a broader stretch of road before me today.

 

It is quite different from the constricted and narrow road before me when I was a child, but it too ends in happiness and satisfaction that lasts only a short while, I know.

 

I move on all the same. I have a long way to go before I can touch the evanescent drops of joy supposed to be at the other end.

 

Walking over this track is going to be a lot more comfortable, at least I hope so.

 

Moreover, the drops of joy I am heading for may as well turn out to be bigger than I thought them to be. Happiness  just might be king-sized, bigger than anything I have ever known, it might even be eternal.

 

Nothing is eternal, I remind myself, but the quest of eternal joy is, after all, what brought me to the road I find myself before today.

 

All of us strive for eternal joy and happiness, but no one ever finds it. Everyone has to be content with whatever bits and bytes of it we come across. I shall also have to be a part of this crowd.

 

I often wonder if these small bits and pieces of happiness and joy we discover in our lives is what we should strive for instead of aiming at an entire ton of joy.

 

Our struggles in life would be reduced to a bare minimum in this case. All of us are actually going to be happier, more content and satisfied this way.

 

The problem is we are never content with whatever amount of happiness we have. If someone were to get as much happiness as in a bottomless basket, he or she would still want more of it.

 

If happiness were to be equated with wealth, it isn’t surprising that even the richest man in the world wants more money every single day  he lives.

 

No amount satiates anyone. This is why the road before me appears to  be endless.