“Oh honey, you have grown up so much since I last saw you. I can barely recognize you!”, said Iris’s grandmother to her when they met each other after a decade.
“This was our happy place: the sanctuary of our dreams and fears; the place where we used to play from dusk till dawn, losing ourselves in the secluded magic of its embrace. And yet, now it is but another parking lot. It’s funny how it’s still the same, and yet so very different!”, sighed Sana, as she and Neil glanced with longing at the orchard that didn’t exist anymore.
“Why haven’t you been returning my calls and messages? We’ve been friends for six years!”, I said to Suhana. She replied, “I didn’t think it prudent to stay in touch. It was not a real friendship, just an illusion.”
I’ve often wondered how and why trees in bloom lose their vigour, places holding moments frozen in their confines transform into unrecognizable vistas, treasured friends become strangers, and strangers become irreplaceable parts of our lives. And though the answer to these questions is as eternal as eternity itself, it is simultaneously fascinating and saddening; because there’s just no making peace with the cruelty of transience. Transience does, by its very definition, shed light on everyone and everything that should matter to us. And yet, since everyone and everything is transient; one may beg the question: ‘Why bother at all? Why get attached to beloved pets, or mother saplings in one’s garden? Why endeavour to freeze hugs and kisses in time’s immortal sands? Why pay any heed whatsoever to building lasting bonds? Why indeed!’ Because no matter how tight our grit and grip are; people, places, and things we hold dear and consider permanent fixtures of our very being may, without so much a warning, vanish from our lives like the grains of an hourglass, uncontrolled and unstoppable!
At this point, this musing may appear to be a depressing diatribe about how capricious circumstances are; but I assure you it is neither depressing nor a diatribe. It is, instead, a truthful (and yet inevitably subjective) reflection on the significance of moments and change. I find change intoxicatingly beautiful; it’s somehow crippling and yet encouraging to the object of the metamorphosis. It makes the one undergoing the transformation discover parts of themselves hitherto unbeknownst to them. The downside, however, is that it’s almost always an unanticipated cannonball which hits one with a force that is overwhelming and beguiling. And though we know that things and people are, in essence, helpless puppets of change and transience; we never really find ourselves prepared to deal with the onslaught of their betrayal and estrangement, so to speak. More often than not, we are enchanted by the illusion that somehow our friends, our families, our schools, our gardens, our books, our music, our tastes, and our habits are invulnerable to the omniscience and omnipotence of transience; that we shall endure against the vicissitudes of time and tide. We are delusional; and it is this very delusion which makes us lose sight of brief yet indelible moments transpiring in the present, in the blind pursuit of a future that is as uncertain as uncertainty!
Hindsight is an insanely gifted teacher, but its methods are questionable and often paralysing. There’s no point in regretting having missed your granddaughter’s formative years and not being able to recognize her when you meet her, nor in mourning the loss of that sacred little orchard adjacent to your school where you spent countless afternoons without a care in the world, or in grieving when a close (and old) friend suddenly discounts the bond you share with her/him as an illusion which she/he finds imprudent to continue. There’s no point in harbouring illusions of a permanent reality, in worshipping hindsight, and letting precious moments pass you by! Life is brief, and full of more bends than can be feasible for anyone to meander. Transience is real, painfully and obviously so, and there’s no point playing peek-a-boo with the glaring truth.
Appreciate what is happening at the moment, people you have the privilege of calling your own right now, things which give you hope and joy; because these moments are all that you shall ever have. Cuddle that beloved pet, mother the saplings in your garden, freeze hugs and kisses in time, foster bonds (no point bothering about the ‘lasting’ aspect)! And carpe the diem with the knowledge that in this moment, with said people, at said places; you are, despite the omniscience and the omnipotence of transience, living life more unabashedly than the grains of time. In this moment, you are free of the chains of the past and the tempests of the future. You are, in all the senses of the word, alive! And on this note, this musing shall end. Because I have to go cuddle my books (don’t have a pet yet), hug my sister, kiss my parents, laugh with abandon at the silly messages my friends excel at drafting, and the sillier still replies that I seem to have mastered! Carpe diem! Peace out!
When the last leaves wither away,
and all the colours fade into oblivion;
Moments will be all we have left,
in time’s ceaseless and transient fray!
Do not hold back spontaneous smiles,
or let constraints eclipse your flight;
When you seize every little moment,
your soul shall never lack radiant files!
Random Musings Of A Scholar 