Mourning the Other Life

Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu

There is a period of grieving we all go through,

It might be more enhanced than others, but for some it is an intense period of letting go,

Letting go of someone, something, or even a life never lived,

For me I’ve experienced the mourning of this other life through a span of a couple of months,

And all it has been was a period of letting go and letting my heart take the reins,

This transfer of authority, though, was not as brilliant and star struck as the books may make it out to be,

It’s also not as easy, this process of letting go,

This other life was linear and it was safe,

It came with security, financially and socially,

It meant friends, a well paid job and a business,

It meant floating downstream where the other fish were headed, too,

It also meant loneliness and a hollowness of company who couldn’t help the painful growing process I knew I was destined to be on at some point,

It meant untapped dreams and a surface level understanding of the world that lives inside of me,

Maybe the other life means waking up one day and wondering where my life went,

Or maybe it means waking up one day completely content and happy,

Maybe, maybe, maybe...

I can hinge my future on these maybes and still never get anywhere,

So let me try to tell you what I know in this moment,

This moment holds a truth for the next and births a healing process,

Truth stands in the way of fear and the subtle conformities we make for others,

It alters a sense of self in the most authentic of ways,

And brings mistrust and deception to a halt,

It blocks manipulation and games that pollute the true game that ought to be played in this life,

Truth creates a competence of empathy and tenderness,

It creates a tolerance of ambiguity which allows one to thrive on uncertainty,

The big visions never held all the answers,

They were simply visions,

Imagined yet unimaginable,

Brought to life by a wide eyed aspiration and someone with a big heart and giving hands,

Someone with a tough, uneven surface,

With a quiet urgency to light their corner of the universe,

Flames induced by darkness,

That flickering light teaches us lessons of the greatest act of courage,

As its smoke disappears into the still air,

And its wax slowly melts into itself,

Parts of the candle disappear with the blink of an eye,

It knows it needs to let go of parts of itself,

For the flame to continue to burn,

And hold the darkness that surrounds.