After we watched the
rubbish film yesterday, my friend and I were talking about this and that, when,
as we’ve done lately, we got talking about her mother. She’s been diagnosed
with a disease that’s only going to get worse with time. And, later, as I was
heading back, the cab driver told me about the passing away of one of India’s
biggest film stars.
Like my friend said,
maybe we only see our own mortality in that of others. We know how fleeting
this business of life is and just how quickly it can slip away and, yet, we
allow the silly pettiness and ego to get in the way and to eat away at the time
we have. We don’t say what we want to say to those we want to say it to and let
the fear of failure and rejection, and of everything else that years of social
conditioning has drilled into us, to stop us from doing what we want to do
most. Memories of what was and regrets of what couldn’t be, compounded by this
paralysing fear that we lack the courage to ask for what we want, keep us
hanging in limbo, neither fully rooted to the past nor moving towards what
could be waiting for us if we would just take a step towards it.
And, then, one day,
suddenly, it’s too late.