One Fine Day...

Someday you just feel like standing out of yourself. Just watch yourself as the world does. Where are you? What is it that the world thinks you are? And most importantly, who are you for yourself.

So what is it that you really are? And what makes you what you are. Is it the choices that you make? Or is it but a function of choices made by those around? Or is it neither? Do your choices, your decisions, your actions actually make a difference? Is free will for real? Is it really you who makes those choices, who takes those decisions. Or are these governed by this 4 letter f word. I mean fate. Is it fate that rules?

Have you been planted somewhere for a plan to implement itself gradually. Coz they say everyone’s existence has a purpose.

Or have you merely been sent to make plans and create a purpose for your life?

Are there billions of other co-existing plans that keep colliding with and gelling into each other? As tightly knit as the clock’s gears. Or is it just The Plan that matters. And you are merely one of those semi-finished products on a factory’s assembly line, and are from time to time, aligned with the moving parts before you can be deemed finished and are evicted from the system.

One stone thrown in the air by someone, and the ripples created by the stone’s rebound are felt even half a century later. Be it something as catastrophic as what America did to Japan. Or something seemingly as trivial as a marriage that doesn’t work. Or just a car accident. A theft. A fire. A mischevious phone call. An extra drink. Or something like those shallow rules made by individuals for communities. A couple of companies shut down and the world comes tumbling down. And if you are one of those who expect to get a job after having fought hard to get where you are, God save you.

You could be the one suffering years later not knowing what you did to be where you are. Or what you could do to get out of there. All you would see are doors before you. And you would know what you want to see beyond them. But you wouldn’t know which one to choose. They are all part of a grand maze. Each of them opening into a different part of the maze, and won’t allow you to come back after you exit. You aren’t playing a computer game, remember.

But who put you before These doors?

The doors and the world on both sides of them are just one part of the story. There’s more to it than just this. What else could matter? What else has mattered in your life when you have had to take decisions? Apart from where you are and where you want to be? Isn’t it the ones around you? Like the layers of a viscous fluid, there are forces holding you from moving in different directions. Some of them move you towards one of the doors, while some others like you being static. For a moment, let’s consider all forces as equal as they sometimes will, so the word called ‘priority’ has no significance left. You can choose to ignore these forces, what you can’t do is free yourself of them. Each move of yours causes the layers above and below you to adjust. And my question’s the same again. Who put these forces where they are?

There’s one part of the story not yet talked about. It’s as important as the ones experienced so far. It’s the strength of the desire to be on the other side of one of the doors. It’s the desire to expect something on the other side of whichever door you choose to open. This is that part of the story   about which if I ask who created it, you might want to say you did. Are you sure you did? Aren’t desires governed by something else? Didn’t they start developing when you were perhaps just 4? Haven’t they been created by a combination of what your senses have experienced over the years that you have existed? Did you create those experiences around you?

Who created These Doors?

Who put you before them?

Where did the forces around you come from?

How were the experiences around you created to affect your desires?

You don’t know. But surely how the world sees of you is just this. What matters is your own reflection in the mirror. Do you see yourself like this?

Yours truly isn’t someone who leaves outcomes to fate and blames it for whatever he gets. He is a firm believer in doing the best he can. He believes in the fact that though he can’t change where he is today, he can change where he will be tomorrow by the choices he makes. Choices he makes about the door he opens. Choices he makes about suppressing some desires and following the others.

But every now and then he comes across forces that make him feel like a mere spectator. Forces that he hasn’t created. Forces that he can’t control. But forces that certainly bear the potential to steer his life. And every time this happens he stands outside himself and asks  these questions. All yours truly wants to understand is which one among “DEF” is more powerful. The Desires one possess, the Effort put in to control or follow one of them, or Fate!!