twists and turns

Life is not a one way street. We do not have stringent traffic rules and the only traffic policemen are those inside us. In this world, we grow up believing that everything we do takes us further along the path, whether we have ups or downs, it is all along the road called life. We get so used to looking for the next step, the next milestone, the next huge achievement-education, graduation, career, marriage, children, grandchildren-that we forget to take a little step to the left, we forget to dance a little to the right, and we definitely forget to do a 360 degree turn.

The common myth is that looking back is turning to stone, therefore whatever you do, just keep going on. But is that really true? Where we are coming from is almost as important as where we are going, and more significantly, what we see along the way is AS if not more important than what we are going towards. Someone once said, ‘you have to live spherically-in many directions.’ How much easier it would be to know that if we take a detour-take a year off work, get out of a relationship, stay single, change our job etc-we will not be headed into unknown territory. It might not be the road which takes us to everyone else’s expectations of us, but it is definitely a more interesting, enlightening, meandering journey to where we will be who we want to be, or who we really are.

Sometimes I feel we spend too much time analyzing our life and its achievements according to false standards which have no relevance for us. Like the standard of what we must have accomplished by the time we hit 30; definitely married, achieved certain success career-wise, and of course have at least one child. There is never any mention of the minor successes of how much we laughed, how many times we were passionately inspired to feel, how often our hearts sang, how many friends we cherished, how much time we gave to loving ourselves, how we lived to the fullest at every moment-or tried to-and did not betray ourselves, were honest, and therefore content. Someone also said, ‘retain your childish innocence and you shall be happy.’ It really is that simple.