To Come or Already Gone?

Toiling through the school days, one always dreams of a life free from all sorts of anxieties and apprehensions. During those days it appeared that if only those exams and classes and home-works were not there, there was nothing else that could have acted as an encumbrance in the pursuit to such a carefree life. How we envied our elders who didn’t have to go to schools and didn’t have to slog through nights preparing for exams. How much we resented our teachers the day they showed us our answer scripts. We always had a complaint, irrespective of how much marks were given. We were so used to hearing comments like, “Hey, it doesn’t cost me anything to give you marks. So why won’t I give marks to you if you deserve them?” And our musings would be, “If only you realized the level of exertions we went through for this paper.” And then the crestfallen spirit would take comfort from another thought, “Ok, some day all this will be over. And I’ll have a life”. But that day only appeared farther and farther.

Life has taken a long course since those days. The life that I dreamt of as a kid should be here now, at least in terms of the timeframe. But it is not the time or the age that defines the way you perceive your life or what life offers to you. What I realize now is that my dreams then were not to be a grown-up person, but rather to attain a state of bliss in life. And what I realize as a harsher truth is that whatever state we are in at a particular moment, we always have a craving to attain that state of bliss. A state which seems too far all the time, either in the past or in the future.