Confession

Sitting inside my room sipping steaming hot coffee on a cold winter evening, I have no dearth of the time these days. With nothing really important to focus on, my mind is constantly on the run, retrieving the fondest, sometimes hostile, memories of my childhood. How carefree and easy life had been!

I had been so busy enjoying life, oblivious of the challenges and hardships faced by my parents. They had the maturity and the knack of making problems appear so small and easy that I really don’t remember ever having been affected by any disturbance at home. Probably I was too insensitive to sense any trouble, being lost in my own dreamy world.

I remember how my mom used to give me intermittent lessons about life. She had sounded so boring and antiquated back then. I lived in my own dream world and her words failed to make any sense to me. How desperately papa had tried to instil the wisdom of Gita in my forever flickering mind, all in vain!!

His words too fell on the deaf ears when he spoke about spirituality. He would get me enrolled for any yoga or meditation camp held in our colony club. I would half-heartedly attend those classes and hardly paid any attention to what was being taught. I, somehow, could not relate to the seriousness of life.

Almost two decades later, as I ruminate on my not-so-extraordinary journey of life, replete with indecisiveness and escapism, I wish I had taken all those things a bit more seriously. It would have helped me develop a better insight into dealing with the whirlwind of life and saved me some annoying moments. My life would have been much better and I would have definitely been a more confident and determined individual.

Wait a bit, let us comprehend the fact that some lessons are meant to be learnt the harder way. I too learnt those lessons after committing innumerable blunders and countless displays of immaturity on my behalf. Do I need to blame myself for that? I think I tried to act according to what deemed fit at that point in time. Right? No, I am not trying to justify my wrongdoings but I really feel that I was naïve and ignorant enough to keep on blaming others and sometimes, circumstances for my misery, suffering and failures.

So easy was it to blame others and rid yourself of guilt and it certainly provided a boost to my already inflated ego. I do not intend to blame myself for all the unpleasantness as other factors also had a role to play. What I am trying to say is that at least I should have reacted differently so as not to escalate the matter much.

Now, when I look back, how I wish not to have reacted to certain things the way I had done. On top of it, the biggest mistake of my life, I feel, is focusing way too much on the wrongs others had done to me. I wasted so much time playing the victim that I forgot to actually live my life. This had been the biggest regret of my life till a few months back.

At spes non-fracta. Hope is not yet lost. There is still time for amendments and to make my life more meaningful. In fact, that’s the biggest lesson I have learnt over time. Or, have I really learnt it? Well, with Swamiji’s blessings and guidance I am beginning to learn to deal with the little nuances of life. I am beginning to learn to accept myself, circumstances and others around me. I am beginning to learn to not give up. I am beginning to learn to stand again every time I fall. I may not have succeeded in achieving worldly success. But deep inside, something is beginning to change, for good, I presume.