There is a if in life

I like autumn, love the way the landscape changes to so many shades of yellow ad green. The sound of leaves crumbling under my feet made me ask myself so many questions.

Not long ago a tiny fresh green bud sprouted on a branch somewhere, was nourished by nature, saw so many harsh winds and life giving rains and the wrath of the scorching sun. All but to crumble under my unforgiving shoe. Well I didn’t step on it on purpose there were a zillion leaves there on my sidewalk and some had their destiny fulfilled under my sole.

I kept walking towards a crossroad, I was supposed to take a ride back home from there. As I walked along the road that had this small pond with lotuses in it and a few ducks swam lazily in the crisp mid morning sun, I slid a hand in my pocket and rummaged through. There was this tiny piece of a seashell that I had picked up from a certain somewhere, I looked at it, turned it around in my fingers a few times looking forward to the treeline and the road ahead of me and simply tossed it away in the pond. One of the ducks took notice but must have realized that it wasn’t food and kept swimming ahead.
How much weight can a tiny object lay down on our life. Well we can realize that once the weight is taken off our chests. Things are often so complicated, a simple button can have a hundred memories sewn to it. A bench in a park can be hermitage.

Just as the pond ended there stood a small bistro of some sort. A tiny bread and breakfast I presumed judging by the smell of fresh baked bread. I remembered I hadn’t any breakfast that day. How easily can one simply ignore basics when the mind is full with emptiness.

I decided to go in the bistro. I realized that once I remembered my forgotten breakfast that very moment I got hungry. Funny how realizing something makes you change course.

As I entered the humble outlet i stood there staring above the teller at the menu. Hunger makes everything so glorifying but the brain doesn’t stop there instead of satiating the hunger with whatever edible it decides to argue with itself over what type of an omelette is supposed to be eaten. After a few minutes of glaring with a blank face and counting how many times my stomach rumbled I paid for a sandwich and a coffee to go. I couldn’t sit in somehow. As I looked as the people at the tables around me when I was in there I felt like a Charles Dickens character, nose pressed against a glass of a restaurant peering in to the lives and families of others and imagining the stories behind their smiles and the people behind their faces.

Instead I walked out with my sandwich and coffee. Finally a bench!

I somehow liked the smell in the air now. Previously it was just the morning breeze and the lotuses form the pond and the other typical autumn fragrances but now the aroma of fresh ground coffee and herbs form my sandwich made it a wee bit relaxing. I simply closed my eyes and let out a huge sigh.

I sat there for some more time I let the feeling sink in. I wasn’t hungry anymore so that was a plus. I dusted off the breadcrumbs off my clothes and tossed the remnants of a once good breakfast into a bin and continued walking.

I stumbled across a tiny pine-cone. Such a cute little thing yet yo open and bloom but now it wouldn’t do so on the ground. Something about this little guy was intriguing. So I decided to toss it in my pocket and think about it later.

Happiness, sorrow are momentary I thought, as we keep walking down the road of life we unintentionally step on a few leaves of expectations that others have from us. Some we live up to some others we have to let go like the seashell. We see passers by like the ducks in the pond unaffected by or presence. Many times our choices make us take a detour in life. Sometimes for good but some for bad. Good things give us success, bad ones; experience. Our brains too plays games on us. But once we prioritize things we can still pull our shit together. All we need to do is keep walking who knows what interesting finds, wait for us ahead.

We are all beautiful stories but we don’t all belong in the same book.

The Waterman