To all the things I have taken for granted

Age is just a number......

A very simple and common yet a heart-cord striking dialogue. A year consists of 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days......which at times just flies by like an eagle or crawls like a snail.

When I had turned 23, I felt like a know-it-all adult ready to blast her final year and that was when God put me through a test - an obstacle race. The first obstacle was something I couldn't jump over. It was placed too high for my legs to cross. For a moment, I felt as if I would rather stay down there than get my arse all worked up. To be honest, I think that was what I wanted. To stay there because I couldn't jump through. After all beggars cannot be choosers.

One fine day that place where I was standing stagnant like a puddle of muddy rainwater, suddenly seemed too toxic to stay. I couldn't breath and I knew I had to break free. Darwin's theory of 'survival of the fittest' seemed to ring a bell in my mind and that was when I had to move ahead which I did quite well. So what if I couldn't jump through!? I could climb up the obstacle and then get it over with. It was my way of winning the race and that was how I was going to do it. Everyone shared their own ways of crossing over the obstacle but I had my very own planned out quite well. I was not going to listen to the pitiful voices of my very own demons in my head which had almost succeeded in demoralising me and making me believe that I couldn't win. 

Life is like a relay race. At the end of the day, you realise you have been moving around in circles and ultimately reach where you had started thus completing a major lap of your race against life. What I am trying to convey is the fact, no matter how much I try to be something I am not and cover myself up with the fake facades, I clean my makeup to see the original me staring at me through the mirror with doe-like eyes.

The transition period of one year between the 23 to 24 years has definitely been a hectic one, but one amongst the finest in my life. The new me is more sober, more sophisticated, more independent and belongs to the modern era. The era in which women rule. The era in which independent women subdue the patriarchical society. The era where women fight back when taken against their will. The era where I will be one of the women who is a compilation of all these.

I committed mistakes; the same kind many a times. But I am not guilty, because I don't have time to repent. Rather I have time to find different solutions to that same problem. Who knows when which one works better! 

If one asked me how I realised that I had stepped into my adulting shoes and womaned up, I would smile softly and reply 

"The day I stopped searching for happiness and let happiness come to me all by itself was when I knew I had become a woman."

When you stop chasing something,  it chases you with a velocity more than that of your own. When I let go of something and chose to stare at my object of desire with a tired look whilst it was running indirectly begging me to chase it, and changed my course, I wasn't taken for granted anymore. I was run after, begged to be taken back and everything that I had been doing for them because to be honest for me it was mere tossing garbage into a dustbin while for them I was a lucky 2000 rupees note that had flown out of the hand and gone with the wind.

We should always be happy with what we have in our hands such as a pumping heart, a rooftop over our head, a tubelight to illuminate our vision and water to quench our undying thirsts. We take these simple and beautiful things for granted as though it was something we deserved and received it. One fine morning, I was late to college because there had been an unforeseen collision between a truck driver and a young biker leading to the loss of a young life which could never be returned. My heart went out for the family that lost their child who had taken his life for granted and tried overtaking an enormous truck without once thinking of the horrific consequences. I was speechless for a while and couldn't comprehend the events taking place in front of me and that was when I realised that at some point even I had taken my health too lightly. I silently prayed to the Almighty to let his soul rest in peace and thanked him for giving me a beautiful and safe life. 

We never know what we have in store the next moment. Why not stay vigilant yet relaxed, focussed on our work yet happy with friends and family, proud yet humble for all the things we have been bestowed upon by the Almighty himself?