One always comes to a standstill. There’s this moment in life when you will.
If you have always been involved in the rat race, then you might be braked down to a trifle at the fag end. Being a logical guy, you’d say, that’s the best thing to have happened. Being a practical guy, you’d say, you’ll have lived your life. Being just a guy, I’d say you’ve been running in the wrong direction.
If you let life pass you by, then maybe you’ll be feeling this every alternate moment. You will encounter a red light every second crossing. You will always pause to think. You will think to act. You will think to do. You will think to think. And then you will think, what actually did you think.
If you are among those who have visions and dreams and fantasies, you must have started walking with a chrysalis in mind, let it formulate into a caterpillar, and started running. But then, you lose the butterfly. You think it’s there around the corner, behind that hedge, across that river, hidden behind those trees. But anyway you go on, without a reason. Rather, you lose the reason. You go on, more so because everybody around you is going on. People tell you that “a winning horse doesn’t know why it runs, it runs because of pain. Life is a race, God is your rider. So if you are in pain, then think God wants you to win the race.” You run because you have to run.
And then all of you will stop someday. You have to. Maybe most of you will look at it as something you have to. But there’s a reason behind it. Life’s isn’t all about being ‘The Rat’ in the rat race. Life isn’t about being the cat either.
Something/someone always comes along at such dead ends. Be it a Coelho or an Ithaca or a Haley or a Hosseini, be it that cinemascope, be it a philosopher and guide you find in your friend, be it a spiritualist or a sage, be it that ever smiling ice-cream vendor passing you by every day, be it that drunk auto driver, be it your love who you never thought it could be.
‘cause standstill is when you actually stand still, when you actually pause to think, and then when you actually will do and act, when you actually go on into the desert holding the hand of the one you cherish the most.
