My tryst in a tempest

It seems like a dull day. Not that the place is dull or that the morning is dull, it is all bright and sunny and warm, just a right day to play a sport or walk around with friends or just hang out or read a book or do anything other than procrastinating. And it is not that I do it often, but I got up this morning with a dull ache in my heart, for some reason. Perhaps this is what people call being home sick. I never realized I am that sort of a person. New place excites me a lot. I love to meet new people, I love to explore the surroundings, I love the independence that comes with being alone in a strange place. I feel it to be an opportunity to see how I fare and how I react to the situations. But, this time it seems different.

Walking around the Mississippi river, along the bridge gave me a reminder of one other experience I had, the one that made me an altogether different person, the one that exposed a different side of me to myself, the one where I was carefree and enjoyed the challenge of a new place. It reminded me of the lone walks, the casual conversations, the respect of the strangers and above all, it reminded me what it means to live with people of different communities and back grounds and explore in subtle way the unity in diversity. Here and now, the familiarity of the people, yet the strangeness that revolves around them, knowing that we come from some common back ground, but have different perspectives and feelings for life is not so much of a comfort. It is not a comfort to know that you have people to talk to too. Why? Isn’t it strange that the comfort is not comforting?

A bright morning is clouded by nothing more than the thoughts that are revolving in my head, half of them that have to do with me living up to my own expectations. This is not the promise that I made to myself when I came here. But then, it sometimes is not all about promises, isn’t it? From afar, the land looks green and beautiful, but once you land there and walk around, you notice that the path is unclear, that the beauty in the scenery is because it was uninhabited, the limited paths that exist are those of the passing travellers who left their footprints for some stranger, who walks in those paths on some random day, forming their own impressions, all the while, leaving something for someone to ponder upon and to take it into their life. You also notice that the beauty is no longer a beauty but a trap to invite you into the depth of the paths intertwined with emptiness. Above all, it is the loneliness that adds to the beauty of those unexplored paths. And that is a pinnacle one has to enjoy to hold themselves together.

I progress along these uneven lands, my tryst with the tempest, hoping to find a shore that is my pinnacle, be it loneliness or grandeur and be it with the crowd or without. Of course, sometimes, solitude is a crowd in itself. The voice(s) that one hears is a company in itself. These are phases in life, that I do enjoy the most, particularly because there is somewhere inside this tiny person, an alter ego that urges me, on the side of caution, to persevere despite the pressing burden. I love that person, I love that sanity. So, good luck to me!