Jungtina Jamir
Somewhere in time, in everybody’s life there takes a detour on the road of destiny. I often wondered what destiny and fate meant. Is it the same thing? I questioned. Deep inside I knew it meant two different things. My limited mind as much as my limited vocabulary had trouble understanding the ‘deep’ that was me.
I meet Wise ol’ man on the detour. Someone I did not expect. Who does anyway? Life is unpredictable….in all ways.
One night I asked Wise, “what is destiny and what is fate?”. Wise asked me if I have a destination in life. I didn’t know what to say really, but I said “Maybe I do”. “Destiny is something we choose to go after.... Fate is something that happens to us on the road to destiny”. These aren’t exactly the same words Wise used. But yes, Wise meant the same. Those words were just what I have been trying to bring out in me. Funny!, the answer to my question was in me, but I never saw it. And come to think of it, it took Wise only a few words to make me understand. Sometimes it’s just a word that opens up the door to a million answers. Most of us, maybe a few of us, have thoughts like that. We should have, would have and could have, but don’t know how.
It’s been sometime in eternity since I have understood what pain is. Is my pain greater that yours? We all experience pain some way or the other at times. Wise always seems to have answers, no, more like simple enlightenment to my questions. Somehow I felt that Wise must have gone through a lot more than me. One day I told Wise, “Your experience with pain is greater than mine”. Wise kinda smiled and said, “No! It’s not like that. There is no such thing as greater pain, smaller pain”. I will always remember what Wise told me that day. A little child cries when s/he loses her/his favorite teddy bear. It’s just a teddy for us, but the hurt, the pain of losing something so dear to the child is the same pain we feel, the same pain we go through when somebody close to us dies, when we know that we have an incurable disease…and so on. Wise told me just that. Maybe not exactly the same words…again, but it meant the same. Does your mind just weigh down with a thousand memories of what might have been?? Mine just did. Everyday is a new day for me. I will learn until I rest in peace. We all will.
Wise put some sense in my approach to life. It’s not that mine didn’t have any but just. Some of us have the ‘deep’ that we refuse or pretend to get out of. But then life is beautiful, cliché. Take another look and it has a deeper meaning to it. I don’t know what life has for me. Sometimes we wish to see what the future holds for us. But hey, lets all agree to the fact that the unpredictable is what makes life beautiful and the simple power of ‘Hope’. Yes, Hope! How many of us have jumped with joy when we passed the exam we thought we never would? How about the other time you actually had tears in your eyes when the only person you thought didn’t love you actually came up and said s/he does? Hope is for the living. If you like to see the sun rise, then you have hope. Do you feel happy when your friends call you to say hello? Yes? Then you have hope. If you refuse to let a friendship die, or accept that it must end, then you still have hope. If someone hugs you and you forget everything that you are even thinking of, then you have hope. If, when faced with the bad, when told everything is futile, you can still look up and end the conversation with the phrase... ‘yeah...but.,’ then you still have hope. …
For a lot of people the word hope carries more strength than the word love. For me it does. Yes, I know without love nothing is. But I am talking in a context where hope puts a smile on our face when the heart cannot manage. Hope is amazing. It will hide sometimes, it will twist and it will bend…but it will hardly break. And yea, Wise made me think all this and more.
As I sit here and wait for the world to turn half way around, I think of what Wise just said the other day. “We can’t change yesterday, but we do have the power to make today a wonderful day”. Again not exactly the words Wise used, but yea, it means the same. Maybe some yesterdays are not the days we wish happened. But it has anyway. We have questions. “Why?” How many of us have found the answers? We may not always understand, but all things happen for a reason. I haven’t found answers to all my questions. Wise hasn’t either. It does matter sometimes, why wont it? But then again it doesn’t!! Past is past. You don’t hold on to the past. Let the past hold on to you if it has to, so that maybe you can sometimes look back and see how much you have come off it ever since.
Wise told me something about Trust too. Trust is when I give Wise the key to my car. Let Wise drive!! Maybe Wise doesn’t know how to drive, so until Wise does we’ll just talk. See?? Trust is simply that. I don’t know how to put it in better words than what I just said. (Remember my limited vocabulary?) Trust is something like not knowing what God is going to do next, but you believe anyway.
Open your eyes. What do you see? Do you see people? Look at their faces. Curious looks, angry looks, unresponsive looks, looks of focus? Do you see the person smiling at you? No? Look again. What do you hear? Traffic? Gossip? People on the cellular phones trying to battle the bad network? Cursing and swearing? But do you hear the songs of the birds? Now smell the air. Exhausts? Odors? Smell again. You will smell the fragrance of the perfect blossom. Feel the heat? The humidity? But did you not also feel the breeze that is gently trying to cool you? These are the little things that will actually change you in a way you never imagined. There is always comfort around us if we know where to look. Wise made me understand this.
Wise ol’ man, this ‘Piece’ of my mind has come to 1000 words or more, but yea, what are 1000 words compared to the zillion miles I have to walk before I can even understand what the world means! This is the beginning. I am what I am, taking one step at a time; S-l-o-w-l-y. Right now my state of mind is an out of body experience. My state of mind is a separation between the soul and mind to be as one with each other, a state of mind in control of my helplessness..almost.
The sun has begun to set and I hang up the smile I’ve worn all day. I will make sure it is the first thing I put back on in the morning because life is better, so much better with a smile. Family and friends are always there to be the shoulder we need. So come pain, come failure, and come whatever!!
