Yes. Strange though it sounds!
It always amazes me that how day after day things seem to be all still yet when you look back at the years; nothing seems to be constant – not even a fraction of it! But it makes me question the supremacy of The Presentthat it holds so much power in itself that all what we have been, what we faced, what we lived and what we felt holds no place in us – once it’s gone.
It would be unfair so to believe that you are just what you are at the moment – nothing more nothing less. It is like demeaning all our experiences and make us something that is just the product of our present actions and consequences. To say the least – goes well with present day scenario – Instant Karma, Instant Results.
But then I look inside and ask – that is how I would like to see myself as. The result of my current actions. No. it sounds to me like Maggi 2 minutes. Rip open the packet, shed the content in the water, boil it and voila – the Maggi is ready to eat!
That is not how quickly I became what I am – for all the ones around me to consume. When you love me or accept me you do so for what I have become over the period of years and when you disapprove me – you do so for what I have not been able to become. So you do not love what I am right now. But you love ‘the me’ which is the residue of what has remained inside me from the past, what has been grilled so far to make me taste like I do.
I have been burning each moment. Slowly and Slowly. While I were a kid, I committed mistakes and burned myself then. What remained were the lessons. As I grew up and studied and burned some marks. What remained was the learnings. I grew up a little more visited places and burned the prejudices. What remained – a milieu of cultures and acceptance! And then relationships, successes and failures – what remained was joy, pride, humility. It went by and goes on still.
Every time, I was experiencing an emotion or living the present, I was burning myself in the moment like a cigarette does. It is pleasure for the moment. It surely is. The moment keeps you take a drag deep and *Sigh*. We are in the ecstasy of the moment yet as a matter of fact we are burning. But the moment; like the cigarette has to end then. And all what you have been breathing in or living through is caged in the cigarette butt. All that matters is what has been filtered and remains behind. Now the question is you throw it away or keep it safe.
Knowingly or unknowingly this residue is what defines our existence but not the “very” moments we lived (read burned). As the time goes by the jar of our life keeps getting filled by the cigarette butts that have remained from the infinite instances of burning at those very moments. These cigarette butts are what defines us. The amalgamation is what constitutes us.
We burned – at times for ourselves and at times for others. Yes, we were the source from which they wanted to take a drag. So many lips kissed us and at times we kissed some too. And that is how so many stories were shared, experiences narrated and the warmth spread. All that got caged in those so meaningless cigarette butts. I would be amused if somebody asks to those butts “why are you so dark?” Only if they could answer back “While you were burning, there were left some scars!”
It is just that we rarely understood that we are not what we are when alive but what remains when a part of us dies. We all burn – we all are burning every moment – only for what we are going to become or what we have already become. No wonder we are all a jar full of cigarette butts!
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| At the end of it, we all be like… |
