Of All Things Left Behind

Good afternoon to all my wondering-wandering-and-pondering-over-life readers!

As the year comes to an end, and we begin the first day of the last month of 2017, I find myself lost somewhere between sorrow and hope.

Sorrow, because of the realisation that we have absolutely no control over time. It simply ticks on, moves away, and leaves us behind. No matter how hard we try, we can never keep up with it. We cannot stop it in our happiness, and we cannot fasten it in times of our grief. We must endure its anguish, and we must await our reward for perseverance.

I guess it often does reward us.

But almost always, it leaves us battling with the ‘what-ifs’ and the ‘if-onlys’. We never take the decisions we should have, only in the greed that we can do better. We never accept the opportunities that knock on our doors, only in the greed for the ones we had specifically wished for. We never do what we actually want to do, only in the desire to please those who don’t matter, and honestly, those who don’t care.

We give up friends for blinded love; we give up love for family; we give up family for ambition; we give up ambition for reputation; and we give up almost everything for ‘What will those insignificant-but-judgmental people say?’.

Grief is one man who never comes alone; He is always accompanied by Mrs. Regret.

And consequently, we wake up one winter morning and fail to understand why we dream about people and things we left behind so many years ago.

Missed opportunities? Perhaps.

Perhaps it is just one of those days where I feel the need to write about things that are painful to remember and only leave an ache one can no longer dress.

But beyond all this grief, there is hope too. The silver lining behind the stormy clouds? Well, who knows. That’s the thing about hope… you never really know what is going to happen, you can only wait in anticipation of something better.

Hope is the only part of your imagination that drives you forward and gives you the unflinching impetus of perseverance. It pushes you, pleads with you, and holds your hand while you drag yourself forward, even when you don’t want to.

Sometimes, it pays off, and pays off really well. You find yourself with something you could never have even dreamt off.

But at other times, it leaves you with lessons, lessons which haunt you for life. Lessons you wish you never had to learn, but inevitably have to.

So what did you leave behind this year?

Pain?

Heartbreak?

Hope?

Happiness?

Friends?

Family?

Home?

Career?

Or, love?