Across The Universe

 

What if the world really were to collapse this year? All our lives, simultaneously, cease to exist? Our death anniversaries, coincide? Would you be satisfied with what you've woven into the world thus far? Of course, to achieve that would be ideal and therefore, utterly impossible, but do you think you could leave things as they are? Or shift your gear to number five and finish all that you think you were meant to do? My questions are a way of delaying the answers I don't have. Whether or not this debate of 2012 being the year of our doom gets resolved (I have a feeling we will be in 2013 by the time it does), aren't we always advised to live each day as if it were our last? Realistically, keeping a provision for contingencies such as bad hair days, mood swings and PMS, why don't we instead try living this year as if it were our last?

 

Through a roller-coaster-cum-maze my life has been in just (wait for it) two decades of its completion, I think I'd like to pick my last year as one that (I know you're expecting peaceful and saint-like) is the scariest and most unexpected ride of my life! Because what fun would it be otherwise? I've spent afternoons in dingy, musk-smelling bars with anticipation of where the evening will take us. In alleys trying to distinguish our breath from the smoke. In comfortable hand-me-downs, with an excuse of a winter, relishing warm tastes. In yellow-blacks, entangled beyond comprehension. In the lives and minds of others because nobody has left anyone a choice anymore. 

In Ford Fiestas. In a place that tries excusing itself by adopting a happy name but that doesn't rule out the memories it gave me that make me cringe, even today. Taking a full year break and then coming back to a life I always used to know. To people I love (even though some of them I don't like very much, but I still love). To the horrible, horrible, horrible inevitability of growing-up. To prospects of magnanimous success or stupendous failure, both equally exciting and fear invoking. To finding love, losing love, and then not knowing what love really is.

But I do. You have to be selfish even when it comes to one of the most selfless concepts in the world. It can be love if it's one-sided, but it cannot be ego. It can be love if the balance is tipped to a 70:30, but it cannot be self-esteem. It can be love if you give all he asks for and never the other way around, but it cannot be healthy. It can be love if you've roughed all his troughs but never been the one he looked for during the crests, but it cannot be friendship. When you realize what you're worth is really a lot more than that, and when the realization hits you if there's even ONE person by your side to tell you that you're doing the right thing and that you're going to make it, you're going to make it. And here I am.

Something changed in me the night of the beautiful lights, an open sky, the grains of sand that I could feel, each and every one of them as distinct as if they were many times their real size, and the unconditional love that was coming to me from all directions and the love that was emanating from me. The night we welcomed the new year in Paradise. All this while we'd been labeling the feeling as ecstasy, when what it really was, was not a feeling, it was a state. A state of contentment. And of security. I had my backbone that night, and my eyes. But when I thought about it a little more, a few kilometers away, I just as well had my mind, left-hand, right hand, my two feet and heart, safe and sound. And I wasn't apologetic about any of them.

Take these away and you'd think I'd be rendered inconsequential. But my soul is unique, and mine alone, and when the world (or the world as I know it) ends, it will know what to do, it will know who to tell, it will know what to tell, somehow it'll know. So I have a picture in my head where boy meets girl, boy kisses girl, and the world could happily end at that very moment, because it's the simplest and sweetest kiss in the world... And sometimes that's all you need.

This is late, but do have the happiest new year. :)