Wonder

Taking a break from Math is on the agenda since numbers aren’t really supposed to swim around your head. Shutting my eyes isn’t the solution since the numbers also sneak up on me there. So I hazard a glance outside the window and receive a pleasant shock. Pleasant shock is the correct term since I haven’t seen a sight like this in ages and the inherent simplicity of the beauty fills my joyous cup to the brim. A passing shower left the trees a greeny green, dripping dew. The sky was a gentle blue grey. It looked like something I’d have drawn in art class with poster paints titled ‘A rainy day’ or something. Simply marvelous with all the greens with bright orangey-red flowers to offset it. It even made the black tar road look pretty in the setting. The beach was a decided gold and the sea a tinkly silver. So much beauty!!! I drank it in like a shipwrecked survivor starved for food. How much I took for granted. How much I missed because my nose was stuck in a book or my mind on a cellphone conversation. To add to the awesomeness, a sparrow chirruped from a wet bough and his brothers joined in chorus. Quite a rare sight (sparrows have gone Gawd-kows-where). It put me in such a generous mood that even I forgave the crows their grating caw. And the air! Oh the air! It smelt like paradise. One whiff and I was made new again. Something about it makes you feel like a new person –cold, fresh, smelling like wet earth and flowers. As close to heaven as I get, on earth.

Living to regret the pain

This is what Kahlil Gibran had to say about pain

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell
that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its
heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder
at the daily miracles of your life, your pain
would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your
heart, even as you have always accepted
the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity
through the winters of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the
physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink
his remedy in silence and tranquility:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided
by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips,
has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter
has moistened with His own sacred tears.”

Unlike many, I don’t find it liberating, I don’t find it a “gift” from the “potter”. After a storm of tears I feel drowned or drenched not emancipated. The constant pain eats into my soul searing myself from the truly happy person I was before. This pain manifests itself in various forms… one more devastating than he other; till I’m left with pieces I’ve managed to salvage but still don’t make a whole. I can’t run or hide ‘coz it’s on the inside… throbbing, unremitting, unwavering till I’m screaming in my own head for it to leave. Physical pain is nothing compared to it…the bruises, cuts or bleeding doesn’t compare and doesn’t make one forget. Prayer doesn’t assuage it, meditation doesn’t calm it and talking about it is a waste of time. I grit my teeth ad hold it all it, put my mask firmly in place. Its source varies faster than a blink till I’m hurting with pain from everywhere that I can’t tell what’s causing me to ache. I hold myself tightly so I don’t disintegrate because that’s what it’s feeling like right now. The death-grip on my sanity is as unwavering as the pain… if I let go, it might let go… I’m not taking chances.