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| A beautiful winter morning! |
Every day is bright, beautiful and a new opportunity to live the day fruitfully, yet I, like everyone else categorise my days as different days of the week and condemn Monday and look forward to Friday. Actually, every day is the same. A weekend is a time for rest, recuperation, stocking up for the week and clearing the clutter piled up during the week. Weekdays are for earning my living. It is the time to be spent for being innovative, creative, organising, moving forward in my organisation, puling up people, getting pulled up, and so on and so forth.
A child has to learn, youth has to develop skills, adults have to work and retired people have to find ways and means to be heard by all the busy people of the world. Each person has his own goal to pursue.
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| A busy peacock!...showing off |
After a number of years of studying then working, one fine day I retired from my job. I had then wondered what life had in store for me. From a fully disciplined, regimented life I was suddenly going into a world where I was the master of my own time. There were no schedules, no one to whom I would be answerable. No one watching over me and assessing my performance!
So when this time arrived I had to calm myself down and accept that now onwards I would have to decide how my day would be spent.
The evening of the day that I retired I left for a small vacation to Agra. I am fond of History and looking at the Taj has always been a happy experience for me. I therefore spent two days at Agra and came back home knowing that henceforth mornings were no longer going to be rush, rush, rush.
From then onwards life became smooth. I started enjoying my days, my life and learnt that there is a life beyond the Bank where I had spent thirty years of my life.
Travelling, being with my children, enjoying my time with my grand children became another facet of my life.
I wrote short stories for children, I started writing about life, my travels, my family and even tried my hand at poetry.
As there was no one assessing my capabilities, I took to all these activities like a duck to water. If someone liked to read what I wrote, I was happy, if they did not like it then I tried to improve. There was no competition, no judgement, no rat race. I was simply in an exploratory stage. I kept exploring the different opportunities available to me. I kept reaching out to new things, just learning, trying and honing my skills.
I now love my independence. I love every day of my life. Every morning I wake up with a new anticipation. Every day I look forward to happiness. Being human, sometimes I too have my sad moods, but then I get hold of my thoughts and turn them around to become happy. Just like in a smiley face vis a vis a sad face with an upturned curve of a smile versus a downward curve of a sad face!
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| View from my window in Autumn or Fall as they say in USA. |
I have decided not to allow anyone to sadden my day. No one will have the power to make me depressed. I am master of my day of happiness.
I do not believe in fate, destiny, or karma. I decide here and now what my day and time will be like. Nothing is fore told or written in my bhagya. I go along with time and try to make the most of it.Having said that, let me share with you my latest adventure. I am now trying to overcome my fear of water. I have always dreaded boating and rowing. I could never swim. This latest venture of course has not been out of my own volition. During my annual visits to London every summer, I would accompany my grand children to the swimming pool. I mustered enough courage to buy a swimming suit and would sit like a beached whale on the side of the pool. One day my six year old grand daughter came to me and said, "Nani, hold my hand, come inside the pool, it's not scary." This got me thinking. I decided to get over my fear of water. It has taken me two years, but I have taken a decision to learn swimming.
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| Life is a celebration! |
It is an effort, a tremendous one, but with encouragement from my children, and the constant support and guidance of my grand daughter, I have started taking lessons! I am on the way, and am soon reaching my destination! Life...I meet you with pleasure...always!
7 comments:
So glad you have taken up swimming! I am a poor swimmer too and have only just now have the confidence to swim in deep water. My next challenge is to overcome my fear of cycling!
Varsha, that is a beautiful piece of introspection. I have had similar feelings. Even during my working days I did set apart time to be with myself despite all the activity around me. The three photos that you have posted along with this seem to reflect 3 stages of our lives the fall,winter and spring. I was in US covering all these three during my last visit there. to sum up I would like to reproduce a passage from Andre Gide's 'The fruits of the Earth' -"I am afraid that every desire, every energy I have not satisfied in life may survive to torment me. I hope that after I have expressed on this Earth all that was in me waiting to be expressed - I hope I may die satisfied and utterly hopeless". Great writing, keep it up.
Ye ishq nahin asaan Ghalib,
Ik aag ka dariya hai
aur tair ke jaana hai!
It's good that you are learning to swim.
wish u a journey of million nautical miles!
-balkee
Vijayraghav Mohan says- 'Varsha just glanced through your blogspot - you are indeed a deep thinker and an eloquent writer. I am not a thinker like you nor can I sit down and write more than a few lines at a time . But on reading the great piece of yours my stupid mind feels like this: I am not the master of anything. What have I created in this world- neither my own body nor any of the elements ( the pancha boothas ), nor any of the laws of nature nor any of the foods that I need , nor even any of the stupid things like the tooth brush that I need every morning nor the laptop or the computer memory that I am using now and so on and so on and so on . Every moment of my life is lived at the mercy of somebody or by courtesy of someone . This is true of all of us . Certainly most of us contribute in our own way to this world or society but when I look at all that which is already here or what I get from others I feel so miserably small . Mind is the greatest asset of man and we think that we are masters of this universe or masters of ourselves because we have the capacity to think and act . But we cannot forget that the human mind becomes useless unless certain conditions exist for the mind to do its job. Imagine that Einstein is in a Gumnaam situation and is left in the middle of the Sahara desert . Will his great mind save him ? No ! He may simply starve and die because his mind can work only in something like a physics lab ! The human mind could not have created the internet until man discovered the electromagnetic waves which his mind did not create . I know my strength but would like to remember how some one or some thing is giving me that strength."
Hey Varsha, It's really awesome. Now you started living your life after retirement. I like your enthusiasm and positivism towards looking at things in life AND it is only way of life where you can create your own world AND control of your sphere.
Any one starts living his/her life when he/she is in the independent state or having freedom.
Wish you all the best and cheers :)
Varsha, you have eloquently written this piece. This helps me reaffirm that I am on the right path and this is how I have to go about, now that I am also retired. Thanks for sharing this blog.
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