Arrivals and departures

In life, we can't stay stagnated. We need to move on and on. But moving on means leaving something or someone behind. We usually don't realize this until after we have decided to move on. Moving on or moving away doesn't necessarily mean moving away from a person or place. Sure, when you move from Sri Lanka to the US, you leave a place and people behind. When you change your place of work, you leave behind friends and a place you loved like your own home. We move on from states or stages of life too. This is what makes birthdays important. It marks an arrival as well as a departure. When you turn 13, you arrive at this amazingly beautiful, scary, confusing and messy stage of life. But you also depart from childhood.

We don't get to make that many choices in life. Today, I came home in a crowded train and the compartment I was in smelled vaguely of farts. It was stuffy and I would have rather been in a bus, three wheeler or better yet, the staff transport van I had traveled in since the beginning of 2013. Yet, I had no choice. I had to survive the train ride, and I did.

I would love to spend 2016 traveling and discovering the wonders of the world. And yet, I have exams which I do need to pass. I can choose to let them go and go back to university in 2017 but how practical was this? Would it be wise to delay my degree? It wouldn't, so the dream to travel will have to be put on hold. Just for a while, until I can make that choice.

But once in a while, you do get to make a choice and you need to make the most of it. Today, on the way home, I thought of the most recent choice I made. Some people pushed me to make that decision two years ago. I wanted to make it a year ago but for various reasons, I changed my mind. Today, I knew I was leaving a state of life.

It's not just about being employed or unemployed, single or married, educated or not. It's also about being happy or sad, excited or bored, interested or not. We don't always get to choose how we feel, but sometimes we do.

Today, I'm oddly calm, even as I realize what I'm leaving behind. I'm leaving behind a lot, but I'm also moving towards a lot. Sometimes, we don't make the best choices but we need to make them in life. We need to grow and in order to grow, we need to take chances. I'm ready to trust in fate and let the universe take control for a while.

Maybe I'll end up in a deep pit and I'll have to ask help to get out of it. Or maybe... Well, let's see how it goes instead of making assumptions.

These past few days, I've been struggling to write. I would start a post and then abandon it because it was going nowhere. Or rather, because I couldn't tie the strings together and end those posts. Three years of journalism isn't much, but it made me believe that beginnings and endings are important. Articles need a great start and a great end. The rest matters too but the rest is easier to write than the beginning and end. Now I realize that with posts like this, there can't be a grand conclusion. And there need not be. I can't end by telling you that good choices lead to great things. I'm just beginning to make these choices. I don't know what's in store for me. May be the grand conclusion this post deserves is yet to be realized by me.

Maybe a future version of me will read this post and know just how it should end. But for now, I'm happy to leave it as it is.

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