(The only option left for me wanting to realize my vision is to work hard. To augment my inner abilities, that were not too cooperative, I knew I needed to put in many hours of extra effort that a normal intelligent sort takes an hour. Read my narrative: I have to fight back many mental odds to fulfill my vision to bring my good old days into a documented script).
The odd music tone I have set for morning alarm did the knocking up job duly. The cell phone clangs: it is as noisy; I get a feeling as if I slept among a maddening lot of monkeys. Instinctively, as I got used to, my body refused to peel out of bedsheets, instead jabs out its right-hand thumb to swipe shut the mute sign on the glowing blue screen of my reverend smartphone.
Ten minutes later the reluctant bones quickly alert my ‘self-encouraging apparatus’ to come around to action. It dashed a whispering flash message, “You have words to write, blogs to post, photos to edit, rush, get out and get started.” I sit upright wide-awake noticed a shred of nonchalance run down my medium built body.
It’s an inherent predicament I wanted to highlight: “I’m too slack in mind and body that required much cajoling getting me on a brisk routine any day.”
Undecided, I brood for a while; I remembered a tip of helpful information. It went like this, “when closing in your sixties, don’t rush as soon you wake up. Allow some time for the senses to claim their positions before you start to rush into the demands of nature’s calls ‘. Lest there might arise a situation like a mild reeling sensation that may jolt you briefly’. Not to ignore my heart’s frailty I faithfully followed the advice.
Crazed by the newly acquired fad, I touch open my smartphone to check the morning deluge of the good morning wishes that come in myriad colors, flowers, wise scripts, repulsive wits. Meanwhile, my pet dog squeals, and twists its body once and demurely looks at me as if suggesting, “you can hold yours, but I can’t hold mine, quickly leash me out’.
I open the door; the Pomeranian leads itself along the corridor to space where it relaxes for about ten minutes relieves itself before I collar it in the open to sky terrace that she could enjoy fresh air, and bark at early morning activities two floors below.
I rush back to give a second to check for any souls who have called me. Disappointed, not found any, jack the mobile phone up to charge, and climb up to stairs for a morning stroll.
The fifteen minutes’ daily walk is one I never missed. Rain or sunshine, it’s time I breathe in the gentleness of a tropical breeze, attempt to still the mind to formulate thoughts but my monkey mind never listens. Instead, it digs up and dangles before me the unmerited events that had happened long ago, past unpleasant hangovers, vexing decisions that went wrong. But I’m resolute; I wouldn’t let them violate the promise of morning buoyancy.
I don’t wish to walk about with the corrupt thoughts behind me when the warm sunlight is bathing my body. But the more I insist on pushing them out, the more negativity the damned mind flings at me. There isn’t anything I could do but silently endure the drag as I completed the fifteen-minute uplifting pattern below the canopy of bright sky.
The early freshness of surging moods I hold them fresh before I stretched for a short regimen of meditation, and here again, the swarm of unnecessary thoughts disturbed my intention to stay composed and calm.
Waiting at the threshold of retirement I don’t have a discrete agenda for monetary dividends. My meditations ask for only one benefit ‘I have to bunch all my past and tagged negative thoughts tie them tight and throw them out of the window.’ I pray for a sober mind and a peaceful rhythm in what I got to do – a good enough mind-frame to write and post three blogs a week and photography jaunts.
I wanted to direct all my efforts in one straight flow – to transcribe my emotions to words. It has become the most challenging part of the day’s deadlines. Why it is difficult for me to write? I have to declare about the two insidious traits I hate to admit, which many of my friends are unaware. I’m chronically lazy by de ’fault. As a corollary I allowed myself to go around as an intelligent guy- which I’m not. But stay with me; I’m brutally ambitious when it comes to fulfilling my deep desire to look upon as a writer.
The only option left for me wanting to realize my vision is to work hard. To augment my inner abilities, that were not too cooperative, I knew I needed to put in many hours of extra effort that a normal intelligent sort takes an hour.
So I plant myself plastered to a chair and stare at the formless white space: a blank page in front of me and bleak mind inside me. I fail to rein in any sensible thoughts. Instead, I hear a lot of conversations; debates would burst in pulling in many directions other than the words I wanted to type. I look half-baked; I bleakly gawk at the empty corridor outside my library and hundreds of books lined behind me. It would be the hundredth time I remind myself, can I ever become a writer’. I with no hope conclude: neither have I had the intellect, nor the wherewithal to become one, at least to convince myself.
But I hold for myself a promise, a resolve. I follow the vehemence of my conviction. I clench my jaws, give a piercing stare at the blank page then hit the keyboard. Like my two years grandson scribbles with crayons on a white paper, I keep punching the keyboard. I don’t know what result would I see, but I knew the authentic articulate storms inside are ready to break out in the open.
Meditation was the only weapon I learned to discipline myself; I regulated the firmness not to get swept away by disobedient thoughts or emotions. It meant the difficult to sit over for long hours and journal the stories of my life considering the sieve-like trust I have in my abilities. Before I contemplated to write about my past, I have to first remove the boulders of my inbuilt slothfulness. I have to stay a warrior every minute battling everyday slaying the demons of inertia, laxity, and lack of effort. Then see a larger than myself kind of persona and persevere in sitting tight and write, write and write.
The anecdotes I kept writing were intensely personal, painfully stacked up beneath my heart for many years. The strings of events in my life chiefly included a few successes and many failures, my wife, my marriage, her sickness, her passing away, my lonely retired life, my children, and my grandkids.
Mine wasn’t a story to feel proud about. Then why did I choose to chronicle it? It was like a calling, to pour out the heart’s content; it’s hard and painful, but I considered it as my meditative cushion for healing.
I wanted to seek peace with my past; I wanted to acknowledge my happiness I shared with my wife; I wanted to reveal the agony of losing her, and I wanted to bring the whole of my suffering into an everlasting scripture. I wanted my friends, relatives, most of them to identify me with my experiences.
I never considered myself as a great writer and sought none for the name, fame or an advantage; I don’t mind if people judged me; saw my potholed past as a yardstick of my talent.
I’m writing as much as the tread of my heartstrings would allow and the drips of the squeeze of my emotional honesty would spill out. My earnest belief is someone else might benefit from knowing what I had gone through – perhaps a lonely soul who had been through similar ordeals.
There is an element of shock, courage when I declared I’m not what I’m that people think I’m. Instead, I’m timid, I don’t trust my skills, and I deeply feared the future. Despite, I persisted, I never gave up. I never backed down. I believed I should never give up on my dreams, and hopes. I knew my path seemed uncertain, twisted but I don’t wait for anyone’s hand to support me or lead me. I’m what I write; I’m the best what I believed and enjoyed. I’m elevated; I’m alive when feelings flowed through me and appeared as twinkling stars of words filled in a document. For me, it’s nothing less than a miracle.