LIFE in my mazed mind

What is it about life that makes it so complicated? I'm starting to believe it is the human mind which makes it that way because the network of neurons in the brain are not just that; they are the ones which seem to make the mind a maze. And, I'm one of those slow ones (or should I say unlucky ones?) for whom finding the way out of the maze seems to be a Herculean task.

I am constantly endeavoring to find the purpose of my life. However, at times, this endeavor is crushed by deep depression because I'm not able to balance it out with life's everyday pressures. I'm at a juncture in life from where I cannot see a road ahead, let alone making a choice of taking one. Future seems bleak. I don't seem to figure out what I want to do with life or how I want to live it. However, hope doesn't seem to fade. I'm expecting to wake up one fine day and see the road ahead which I am supposed to take and then the road turning for a better tomorrow. I am not sure if this way of thinking is my undoing, but not clinging to this hope, I feel, is suicidal.

I believe that such conflicting feelings are the ones that make up the essence of life; the darkness of the lack of direction and the light of hope that struggles to balance it out. Guess that is what the Chinese yin-yang theory of life portrays!

Picture courtesy: www.uefap.com/speaking/exercise/mazes/mazes.htm

My encounter with death

Death and a dead person can shake you up like no living being ever can. I learnt this first hand, couple of weeks ago when I lost a cousin who also happened to be my good friend. And, the fact that the death was neither natural or accidental, doubled the tragedy.

The death of this guy plunged me into shock and grief like I've never known before. I felt(still feel) a pall of gloom engulf me and stir memories and emotions on a scale that I just could not control. This was a guy who was a part of my life, with whom I had shared stories, life's experiences and gossip in my teenage years. Then, for close to a decade, I had lost touch with him. Life's routine chores and other human priorities were the culprits, as usual. And, now that he is gone, I feel like there is a gaping hole in my life; an emptiness I feel I should have filled with answers for several questions about his life in the past decade.

My encounter with this loss of a life is not the first, but all the ones I've experienced before somehow did not have this effect on me; may be because those people were not so close to me or because their deaths were natural. Also, this time I somehow saw the various angles to such an incident. The grief and pain of the loss vying for space with the rumor mill working overtime to put a reason to his sudden death and the consequences of his passing away. I felt the pain of the other people who were grieving equally or more than me. I could see how one person's life affects several other people's lives in many different ways. While I was grieving as a friend, there was his wife grieving for the loss of the love of her life, his parents crest fallen over the loss of a beloved son, his brothers shocked at the passing away of a sibling with whom they had shared the ups and downs of their childhood and adulthood.

I can now understand this email that has been doing the rounds in the internet for a long time (about a guy who kept thinking of calling his friend daily but never got around to doing it until one day he learns the friend is no more) much better as I feel exactly like that man. A person who lost an opportunity to connect with a human being who was once a dear friend. I could go on grieving endlessly because I still haven't been able to come to terms with my loss. However, I have chosen to stop because I want the lesson from this incident to sink in. I want everyone reading this blog to think about all that I have said and realize that what or who you take for granted today may not be there for you tomorrow.