Excerpts from the Pages of my Diary

I was just going through my diary to find out what happened the same time last year. Here's what I found worth sharing. Food for thought for me. What about you?

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"It doesn't seem like you're living a life, it's almost like you're travelling on a train with a destination unknown.

You're sitting on a seat near the window looking outside, imagining how things are there outside, how is it like to live in the houses that you pass by. And when you’re busy noticing the outside, you at times do not pay heed to your surroundings inside the coach.

And thus some passengers who got down at a station midway fail to capture your interest, or maybe it is because of your deviation of interest towards the outside. While at other stops new people get up, and you like their company, you share and you laugh.

But sooner or later they get down.

Because it's your journey, you're the traveler and they just accompany you for some distances.

And then, maybe when you reach your destination there will still be passengers in the train, passengers you've mingled with or passengers you hate, people who were there since the train had started or people who got in just before the last stoppage, and like it or not, they will get off the train with you, at your destination which also proved to be there destination."

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And one fine day everything seems to be simply wrong. Why is it so hard to be happy? Why is it so hard to genuinely laugh even for a single second?

Why is it that we spend our entire lives learning to grow up but always miss our old innocent selves? We claim to be happier now for we make more "practical" decisions. But maybe life was better in those times when decisions weren't supposed to be made, they just happened when we were busy living instead of juggling time between merely surviving and living some moments.

I don't expect to achieve all the stars of the Universe. I think I expect very little from life - I just want everyone to be happy, but including myself.

*

You know you're living your life right when you check the pages of your one-year-old diary and find that you have ticked off all the items of the checklist you made- your short term goals.

Now, that I smile thinking about this little achievement, I wonder if I should really call it living if I had to make a checklist at the first place.