It’s hard to rock the boat;
It’s taking you nowhere;
Yet you challenge any opportunity for change.

It’s a miserable existence;
Breathing, but not living.

The toughest journey is changing course
To an unknown destination.

The post The Reluctant Journey appeared first on The Teenager Today.

I kept on travelling the never-ending path,
Not feeling fatigued even for once.
Then I saw the familiar stagnant cold waters,
Waiting for no one but just for me.
I reached out, I shivered at first,
But recognized its touch later.
I cupped the water in the palms of my hands,
And splashed it across my face.
I felt alive, felt my story could be rewritten.
As I stepped out of the water, stepping on each stone,
I realised I did not want my story to be rewritten.
Rejuvenation was a distant dream to me,
And I left it to be so.
I walked along the never-ending path,
This time covered with orange flowers everywhere.
I knew this was a dead end and there was no return from here.
But I stayed as I felt validated amongst these orange flowers at last.
And I wanted it to remain so.

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It happens that sometimes life throws a challenge to us. We follow our set time table, have our usual set daily routine to include time for work, studies, fun, play and prayer. Everything seems hunky dory. And then out of the blue a life-changing incident occurs — an accident, the sudden demise of someone close to us, an unexpected failure. Our usual road is blocked. There are other roads to follow and it depends on us which road we choose.

On 7 June 1893, a young Indian lawyer, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (later known as the Mahatma) was forcibly evicted from a whites only carriage on a train in South Africa. Till then he was a regular brown sahib. But this eviction was a watershed moment in his life. He began to lead protests against segregation via a passive resistance movement called Satyagraha which is born of truth and love and non-violence. The father of our nation went on to galvanize an entire country to shed the oppressive shackles of colonialism through non-violent methods. He was the inspiration for other leaders like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. If the Mahatma had chosen to just grumble about injustice and not act after that fateful day in South Africa, the entire history of our nation may have been different.

Ignatius of Loyola was a Spanish nobleman. He is remembered as the founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and for his book on spiritual exercises for he felt that just as a person exercises his body, he is also in need of spiritual nourishment. The Jesuits have made tremendous strides in the field of education. Ignatius’ first choice of profession was to become a soldier. The Battle of Pamplona in May 1521 was the pivotal point in his life when a cannonball shattered his right leg. He had to undergo a series of operations and as he lay recuperating in the castle, he kept reading and reflecting on the religious books that were his sole reading matter. He could have spent his life in self-pity, but these books changed his entire perspective on life.

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It is defined as “the final part of something, especially a period of time, an activity, or a story.”

This one syllable word can have multiple meanings. It could be the climax of a movie, the finish line of a race, a finale of a play… basically; it’s a final part of something.

We all know that there is an end to everything that is and everything that ever was. Wars, revolutions, they all ended and brought a huge change to the world. The End brings change, be it huge or tiny.

We’ve all had different phases in life. The kindergarten phase (which hardly anyone remembers), then primary school, secondary, junior college and finally here. Do you remember what you felt at the end of each phase? Was it a feeling of happiness and relief mixed with a little bit of excitement of a new beginning? Or was it a feeling of sorrow (since you didn’t want it to end)? It all depends on the times you had. The end of these major phases in our lives may have a positive or negative impact or both on us.

There are also times and moments which we want to last forever. We just don’t want them to end. There are always times in our lives when we fall in love with a particular moment and we wish we could freeze it in a frame and have it stay like that forever, that we could replay that day and keep reliving it over and over. But unfortunately, we can’t. Those times, those blissful moments have to end, too. They end and transform into memories.

Everybody leaves when they have to. Everything has an end. Everything good and everything bad has an inevitable end. That doesn’t mean we should not start anything new just because we’re afraid of the end of it. We’re supposed to encourage new beginnings, make new friends, meet new people and inscribe new memories in their hearts as well as ours. We can’t do anything about the end of anything. It will come. So we might as well accept the fact and enjoy the time that we have.

It’s just like when we’re born, everyone around us is so happy. And when we die, or when anyone dies, people around us mourn the death. But we still live our lives knowing the fact that we’re going to die someday, don’t we?

Almost all fairy tales end with a “happily ever after”. Do you believe in “happily ever after”? What I believe is that the phrase “happily ever after” doesn’t mean that they lived happily forever. It means that in that particular moment, they were happy and that moment would always be special to them because that moment was the end of a beautiful story and the start of another. And there might be another “happily ever after” in their next story, too.

So don’t say that the end of a beautiful moment makes you sad. Instead say: “This was one of my numerous happily-ever-afters that I will treasure forever.”

I would like to end with one of my favourite quotes — “Everything ends. And it’s always sad. But everything begins again too, and that’s always happy. So be happy.”

Remember the happiness of the beginnings, the thrill of the journey and discard the sadness of the end.

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