" No time to turn at Beauty's glance, and watch her feet, how they can dance. No time to wait till her mouth can, enrich that smile her eyes began. A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare."
- William Henry Davies
A wonderful piece of poetry, and a very famous one indeed. Despite being written in 1911, its message is so contemporary and seems so apt even in today's world where we have forgotten to press that pause button that our life does offer. How many of us have even located that option? Or tried to explore it?
We preserve memories through memoirs and wish we could rewind time to that one wonderful moment that could never come back. Then why not pause and live it when it is alive? With so many new things to learn and so many old things to remember, we have started to need materialistic reminders of our moments. What's funny is people are making business out of it. You have memoirs that you can take home with you after you visit that place you have always wanted to visit with a special someone. In Singapore, they etch your picture on a fake ostrich egg and sell your moment to you. Does that ostrich egg make the memory more special? No, it doesn't. You were probably so busy getting that picture clicked right and getting it etched just the way you wanted to that you dismissed the little details of that moment that could not be captured at all. Those that you have missed are what will not come back.
The life we lead today is like an odourless dish. You can taste it, and maybe it tastes bloody damn good but you cannot savour that smell that makes your mouth water. It is the smell of the dish that makes you want it like you have never wanted it more or that triggers the taste buds that give you sheer pleasure just by biting into it.
Undoubtedly we have become busier today than we were yesterday, or for that matter as people were in 1911, but we need to understand that it is us who have made our lives the way it is. Nobody asked us to work extra time or work so hard. But we want to be at the top. We want success, money and we want to be the best. Greedy as we are, but we cannot neglect our basic need for love. The virtue of attachment and care exist and are as much a part of reality as you and me are.
And so while we are on our way to the top, we meet people who are not family. Sometimes we like them and sometimes we don't. Generally those that we like are our colleagues and those that we do not, are our bosses. Or otherwise. But how much does that matter to us? We push them out of our way irrespective of what we feel for them. Is it survival instinct or competition? In today's world, there is no difference between the two. There is no line, no boundary, no rules and those who judge are one of our kinds.
So, how do we deal with it? We become one of them and we fight. We become a part of the rat race. We learn to differentiate our products but unlearn to differentiate amongst ourselves and our personal diversities that make us unique in own way.
We live away from our family till we make it big. We think we have plenty of time to spend together once we have achieved what we want. But what if we don't have that much time. We want to make them proud and we outperform the expected to prove ourselves to the world. Irrespective of whether we do it or not, we are scared and insecure inside that what if we fall or fail or end up leading a mediocre life. But what is so wrong about a mediocre life?
The essence of happiness lies in the people who make you happy. And if your mediocre life gives you time to notice the love in your mother's eyes or the twitched smile on your father's face when he lies to your mum about the dress fitting her perfectly well; if your mediocre life gives you time to call up your best friend whom you haven't spoken to in years or take your special someone out on the day you planned to, then what is so mediocre about that life? At the end, you gather what you can preserve as long as you live and take it along when you don't. Could anybody be more successful than that?
So when you go back home this time, devour the moments you spend with your loved ones. (Not just the food but also the one who makes it). Don't just feel them, live them. And while you are on your way back, appreciate the things around you. Because they don't just exist but co- exist with your existence. They are beautiful in their own way. And so are we. Regain your aesthetics, gather them, hold them, keep them, guard them and preserve them. Reflect upon them, so that people do just the same. After all behavior is nothing but a monkey act!
Have an awesome day ahead!
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