All About Growing up

As you grow older

Reflecting comes naturally...

You look back and all that you have lived and loved. All those you have left behind in your quest to grow up. Part of growing up is great. One tends to appreciate things better. I have always been fond of Tagore and his compositions but I now I listen to them and not just hear. The words have a meaning in my life.

You discover that you have the enormous ability to empathise with others

There is clarity in most of what one does, there is always a perspective and you perceive things with far more depth

When you are young there is a fire brand in you but age tempers you and you know but shouting and being a rabble rouser you will not be able to make much difference and perhaps drown among the millions like you.

As a young gun you equate happiness with want with age you learn it is not about what you want but appreciate what you really have and that there is no real end to desires and wants.

You grow older and realise that it is the humility of wisdom that holds than the pride of knowledge.

Then:

If you are asked what are the things you love and then you have to think hard to pen them down because you have never really thought about them. In your quest to grow up you have forgotten to ponder upon things that really made you happy and instead joined the rat race to seek perceived happiness, you wonder of that list you made as a child things I would do when I grow up and you realise you have really not done much. You want to retrace your path back but you have too come far..

You realise that the promise you made to yourself that when I grow up all will be good all will be right has never been full filled and that you are rid with faults more than ever. All you wanted to do as a child was to grow up and you wonder how much of it you have really achieved... There has always been so much to be done but when you are, running the last lap and you have never really lived . You want to live before you die...

All your life you wished that you had a meaning to your existence and you never really got around to fulfill it.

Suddenly, you wish you could be all good, undo your wrongs, solve your trammels but you know it is too late. It dawns upon you that perhaps you will never be complete and then you ask yourself..

Is the grass really green on the other side. Is all this honestly, worth it...

Sit back and try to think, reflect and soak it the different emotions.. 

Here I can think of a song by Tagore it  fit perfectly into life....

You lament upon all that you could have done and  never really got around to do so yet there is hope and immense joy in waiting and appreciating all that has touched you and all those have walked into your life :

My heart has often wondered about all that I never achieved

In the depths of my heart there is this strange music

Reminding me of all that I have loved and lived

Like the winds of spring that have filled my garden..

The tears in my eyes

Are the reflections of the pain and sorrow I hold in my heart

Through my tears I have quietly worshipped,

I have slipped in my quest,

 Yet, I have managed to keep the tune alive....

The original song reads : "Ki Payini tari hishab milatay "

This is my translation of the song , it is not literal but I have attempted to capture the essence

Tallying the Balance Sheet

It is one of those days when I get a chance to sit back , reflect and examine life, its ups and downs, and the many shades it has shown me. And I cannot help wondering how it feels to reach the twilight of ones journey ,looking at the successes and failures, those that I should have got, I could have got and those that I lost out on and adding up the balance sheet of life in general....  Then you realise, everything, you, me and life in general is ephemeral and as it came, so it should go so learn to let go for the harder you try to hold on, the faster it slips away..... Here I am reminded of one of Tagore's songs where he laments upon the time when life was like a flower.. So I try and pen down my translation of his words.. To this I shall only add, oblivion would only lead to rejuvenation and to a new beginning... 

When life was like a flower, it had hundreds of petals

In Spring of giving it would shed , yet it had so much give

But now that it is in its Autumn, laden with fruits

Its time has ebbed

And now it would give of itself full measure, drooping with the burden sweetness

Slowly disappearing into oblivion