WEATHERING THE STORM

As I sit gingerly on my wobbly chair which threatens to dismantle at any moment and give me a crash course, I can see the winter’s first snow decorating the trees in virgin white. The sky is soft grey whereas everything else down below is sparkling white. Snow has covered every ounce of space and matter with its crispy flakes except for one autumn tree which somehow is still managing to find a way to showcase its bright orange autumn leaves. I intend to sit here for a while and see how this battle unfolds.

A note of caution to anyone who is brave enough to read my ramblings: The beauty outside is really distracting me and hence my writing might not be very coherent. I hear some of you go: when has it ever been! Anyways… it has been half an hour and the orange tree is still showing off. Wind has come to its aid and is blowing away the snow that is still determined to conquer the last remnant of color. I am still rooting for the tree as a dash of orange in this ocean of white seems so invigorating.

Time seems to stand still as I witness beauty unfold itself in front of me in breath-taking fashion. I start to reflect. Something I haven’t done in a while. The last time I penned down my thoughts was more than two years ago. I wrote a piece about memories and the importance of keeping them alive and sharing them. I made a promise to let the ink in my pen go dry, only to turn around and break that promise.

The snow storm that is unraveling outside my little window reminds me of life itself. Our life is filled with a myriad moments we don’t find time to sit back and relish. So many things happen in so little time and if we don’t take the time to reflect, we lose those moments in the whirlwind of time. It is a shame because a lot of those moments are priceless and we would love to cherish and crystallize them in some form or the other. But we keep running all the time. We don’t know the destination. We don’t know the path we ought to take. And in the end, we don’t even know where we started. We just keep running in the direction of the light, not looking back for once and not being able to see forward in the dark. In reality, we are running so fast that we miss the scenery on the way.

This mad run is reminiscent of my life for the last two years. There have been several magical moments which have filled my heart with unimaginable joy. Life has never been better. But then I have never had the time to relax, sit back and run those memories from my mind through the lens of my eyes on to the projector in my heart, push pause, rewind and play again. It may not seem like a big thing but if you think about it, ten years down the line I might have a hard time recounting these amazing memories. I don’t want them to fade away in the continuum of time. I want to immortalize them through the camera of my mind or the canvas of my pen.

I feel like that lonely tree trying to battle the massive army of snow. It is trying so hard not to lose its color, to stand out and not to be overshadowed like everything else around. It is very similar to our struggles in life. We run around doing things that we are supposed to do but ignore the things that we like to do. We go through the motions in our day, brushing through the little joys that it offers, never really freezing ourselves in the moment to enjoy them. Our days are filled with so many beautiful little specs of joy, but we don’t allow ourselves ample time to treasure them.

As I see the lonely tree still proudly displaying its bright orange, I am filled with a desire to ask more from life and give more to it and those around me. Stillness can help clear the clouds inside our mind and see beauty and greatness in the smallest of things. The snow will clear soon. The tree will still be there and so will be the blood orange leaves. If only we are still there to admire it!

On a completely different note, I got to replace this damn chair.