Almost 7 years have gone by since I wrote this (You might
wanna read this first):
A lot has changed in these 7 years: The world has seen more
iPhones than Leaders, more Machine-Learning than Human, more Comedians than Comics,
more Foes than Friends, more Servers than Servants, more priorities than realities,
more Gun than Pen and more Children than Men. This isn’t the world I was born
in, this isn’t the garden of life I was taught the world is, nor is this the
society I once enjoyed growing up in. In the middle of all this, in these 7
years, I felt I’d lost myself in the labyrinth of a self-deprecating network of
professionalism. In the middle of an air filled with hatred, terror and dismay
where for every breath I took I felt myself exhaling a part of my soul , today,
after a long time, the laughing man finally spoke to me…
Seven years ago I started on a journey to become what I
wanted, a thorough professional, an expert in whatever it is that came in my
way, a problem solver whom people could count on. I don’t know if I’ve become
one now but I do know that a part of me doesn’t want to be that anymore. There
is no fun in solving someone’s problems when my own problems have long remained
unsolved. There is no satisfaction that any level of expertise can ever provide.
By far the one thing I’ve known to be true is that being a professional entails
being predictable, and if by being a thorough professional I’d become
thoroughly predictable, what’s the point of being one? In seven years, I’d
started to question my own intentions. In a short span of barely 84 months, I’d
started to lose faith in my goals. In mere 2500 days, I’d started to lose my
own self. But today, for once, after all these years, I heard the laughing man tell
me about myself…
As I look back at the journey in these unknown waters I don’t
see my family, I don’t see Home, I don’t see my friends. Instead I see
distance, I see costly air tickets and I see whatsapp groups. It doesn’t feel
good to see friends-since-childhood
turn into just-childhood-friends, to see a family-of-four turn into three-families-of-two and to see yourself move from dependent-on-dad to dad-of-a-dependent. If this is what
growing up meant, I’d started to feel I was better off never embarking on this
journey at all. But this isn’t why I took up to writing today, for today is the
day I found myself wandering in the same unseen garden of life - unattended. As
I turn almost 30, today as I looked at the man in the mirror wondering where I
was headed, I saw a strand of white hair on my beard. A strand of hair which I
think stood there all along, hidden in the middle of all the sharp black ones,
invisible to the focused eyes of a thorough professional but still there nevertheless.
As I look closer I see a few more of them scattered around all over my beard. In
the middle of all the chaos that life had drawn me into, I felt I had an
epiphany.
I saw that same laughing man I saw seven years ago. Only this
time, he spoke to me. I saw in his eyes that as the time machine moves forward,
while the beard of responsibilities blackens your face it is that one strand of
white positivity, the one strand of being childlike, the one strand of
determination, that multiplies and spreads till it becomes the only truth of
your soul. I was growing older, no doubt, but I wasn’t losing myself. I was
just starting to see the white strands of myself. The shining strands of my
character which was behind all that I’d faced over these years. All these years
where I fought with myself and my decisions to understand what I was and what I
wanted had only made these strands shinier, sharper and stronger. I am not a
function of my past, I am instead a result of my endurance, my skill, and my
determination which have led my through what I’d experienced in my past. The
white strands that only time can bring in your life is what they all call Wisdom.
In the mirror I saw the man I was, telling me that while growing
up isn’t all fun, it isn’t something we can run away from, but it is the one thing
that chisels out the blackness off your character and makes you who you are. It removes all the stone around you and reveals the piece of art that God created in you. And
for that one reason, the laughing man in his sheer remorselessness said, “Growing up is worth it”.
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