While going through one of the tons of forwards, some people have made it a habit to send and fewer some like me, a habit to read, I came across tucked in the corner of an other wise unrelated email containing photographs of dogs (literally), a line that read ' its not the years in your life, but the life in your years that counts'. Though to be honest I have kind of heard/read this one many times before in passing, but never before did it get me thinking.
Into the thirtieth year of my existence, I have often wondered if the shameless pilfering of days into nights and nights into day, over and over again, leaving behind nothing more than only a number, number of years, in its wake, was a reflection on the moribund meaninglessness of human existense and if the almighty ever wanted us to live the way we have chosen to.
But this time, I found myself asking if it was true, actually true, that life is actually meant to be just this, this routine of being born, being pampered, playing around, learning to walk, speak, learning to cohabitate with humans in a society, conforming to the norms of life as we see around us and then finally passing on to another world of oblivion. If this was what life was supposed to be and if this was the objective of human existense, then what have I done in my thirty? Hand to heart, crossing sixty might turn out to be pipe dream for my body what with the lifestyle, so having gone through half of my probable existence already, what has been the 'life in my years'?
The strange vacousness with which my mind and heart stared back at this question reflects the singular lack of anything that could be pointed out as life in my years. Not convinced however, I sat back to gently waft through the dump of my almost thirty, to find out some traces of life in those years.
A certain few moments of life flashed through my eyes, the one hour spent on a rainy sunday sitting on the road side parapet at that deserted serpentine hill road, observing and contemplating the vast green expanse of the valley below. Being lost in a foreign land at night, deserted darkened streets and signages in a language I could'nt read, almost sure of not being able to make it to my room, but feeling liberated, calm and at peace all at once.
And a few more came to mind, but the moot point of having led a life, which when looked back upon hardly seems to have had any life in it really makes me poignant, though I can't claim to be surprised either, 'cause I have always been acutely aware of my lust and ambition for material growth, but did I somewhere along these roads, chasing the self set goals of being something or someone, forgot to stand back, to reflect and wonder if down these roads I was running blind, tucked somewhere at the end would be my soul's contentment.
I keep encountering this question every now and then, what really is this contentment I seek, am I living a life that will eventually lead to it? While I know that my pursuance and need for material things has subsided slowly over the years, but what next? Where is that road to contentment, in this maze like life, so many roads diverge from every corner, is there amongst these the one I seek? I want to understand and listen to my soul, has it still got something to say or are its voices smothered forever?
Someday I need to figure that road out, a way out of this maze, a way to my soul's contentment, a way on which, when I see somewhere ' its not the years in my life, but the life in it', I would peek inside and find myself smiling.
