Stop. Feel. Live.

I must agree that the last few weeks have taken a toll on me. Sleepless nights, project completions, burning deadlines, presentations, exams and life in general.
I am assuming that is a common man’s definition of being ‘stressed’.

So yesterday, I was all sleepy and slow, and I realized how fast everyone else was. Everyday!
Maybe I took a couple of seconds more to get the cash out of my wallet to pay the rickshaw-waala when I saw him make a face. I was waiting at station, waiting for my train to arrive and I couldn’t help noticing all those passing by. Someone was busy shouting over the phone, someone engaged in an animated conversation with a friend, someone listening to music and rushing to climb the bridge, hordes of people climbing down the bridge, numerous passengers walking in to station and so many people walking out. So many people, so many lives. Yet none of them bothered to look up. Neither of them saw the trains or each other. Each of them just looked down and walked. Rushed, to live their busy lives.

Ah! I was a little slower than the rest as far boarding the train was concerned. But I bet I felt someone push me in. Maybe I was a bit slow in getting off, but that was enough for the ladies behind to push me and make their way out fast! Time was indeed precious, wasn’t it? And here I always wondered what difference a couple of seconds would make to anyone’s life.

It was yesterday that I really thought about how our city is often addressed as the city that never sleeps. Well, maybe it doesn’t breathe either!
Given a chance, our idea of the best birthday gift would be an off from work, to constantly pray to God to give us longer days & shorter nights and to hope against hope that we’ll be robotic enough and never miss our daily train!

Conclusion:

We’re all in a hurry. All the time. We rush to sleep late at night, hurry once we wake up, run to college, then rush to office, then finish our work in haste and then we try and rush out of office as fast as we can, run to catch the train to be able to reach home on time, hurry to the best seat in the bus so that we can read that book we’ve wanted to read all day long, rush through dinner because we want to complete our assignments, hurry with the assignments because we want to watch that favorite TV show and then rush to sleep again because we have to haste through another long day!

Moreover, I think  we’ve become so used to the rush, the haste and the hurry that we don’t even mind missing out on some of the most intricate and beautiful moments of life. Moments that will never come back to us again. Moments, that we will only wish we had lived a little longer. Moments that we will wish we had lived at all.

Maybe we need to stop worrying about when we’ll reach office or when we’ll leave. We need to stop thinking about the long day that awaits us or the pending work.
Maybe we just need to cherish all the little joys that we so easily overlook. Maybe we need to just live life as it comes. It’s OK to miss a train or two sometimes, isn’t it? It’s OK to bunk work and go for a movie instead.
Maybe we just need to do what we FEEL like. Maybe we need to spend some time figuring ourselves out and not the train schedules. Maybe we just need to stop, feel and live.

PS : This was just a random thought. I felt like penning it down. So I did!

PPS : I plan to follow this post with a poem (which is currently half written.) I felt the poem would make a lot more sense after reading this post. Hoping to finish writing it soon and I hope you liked this post!