Half-Time

Half-Time

I complete thirty five years today. Never one to consider it a special day (I feel the day is simply coincidental and that it could have been any other day), but a strange thought crossed my mind this time. Given the life expectancy of Indian males, I can assume its somewhere around Half-Time. Call me whatever, but that’s exactly what I thought. It sounds so enormous in magnitude – doesn't it? The enormity of it was promptly followed by further existential thoughts – well, is it? Is half the time already over? How has it been all along? Have I done enough? Can I justify the opportunity I got? et al. I guess there never can be conclusive answers to these questions. After all, it’s the job of the questioning mind to question, whereas it’s the wise heart that has to put things in perspective. So here I go, trying to reflect upon how has it been all along during the first half and how I wish it would be in the second.

Given the conditions into which people of my generation were born and the way things have evolved - in economy, in society, etc - I think I can consider myself to be reasonably successful (Note- the first answer that I sought was in my own judgement of “how successful have I been?”, a sort of balance sheet, which doesn't contain everything, but is considered most important by many). With this reassurance, I went on to find an answer to the more important, but perhaps more difficult question – how has it been all along? While I ponder over this, it flashed upon me that the common driving force underlying all I have tried to do is what I call – “Looking Forward to”. Yes! I have always LOOKED FORWARD TO. I looked forward to becoming an adult when I was a child, I looked forward to acquiring the socio-economic insurance that education in good institutions can provide, I looked forward to getting jobs that befit that insurance, I looked forward to marrying and raising a family and now I look forward to motor along the trajectory that I have set for myself, realizing the potential that it holds, never failing in my duties to all that matter. Well, this is how it has been – I have always LOOKED FORWARD TO. When the Present (pun intended; after all, the Present is a present, perhaps even the greatest of them all) was on hand, I have always looked forward to the next. And when that arrived, I unfailingly looked forward to the next and so on!

Somehow, I find this looking-forward-to business to be some kind of infidelity to the Present. My mind, given the time-space complex that it is in, has always wanted to plot a trajectory for my future and predict where I should be in this continuum – an obsession similar to that of theoretical physicists who have wanted to crack the equations of motion. In this obsession, I realize what I have missed – the PRESENT and LIVING. For Living can happen only in the Present (I feel, that at any point in time only that point in time is real, if at all it is!). A LOOKING-FORWARD-TO state steals the Present from you, makes you think it lies in the future, drives you to chase it and when you think you have caught it, promptly eludes you by making you look forward to still – a kind of dog-trying-to-catch-its-tail!

Now this can sound quite devastating – to feel that one has missed it all! Have I? Have you? Your guess is as good as mine. Never mind, for its only half-time. I have the second half to play still and will hopefully stop LOOKING FORWARD TO. Yes, if I can stop LOOKING FORWARD to, I guess the lessons from the first half would have been well realized.

Oops! There I go, tripped again! Hope you didn't miss the paradox!