It so happened, that a few days ago, I was sitting with a friend with whom I had been very close to till some years ago. Then our paths diverged and we moved to different cities in pursuit of our own individual goals, the usual stuff. Life has a habit of sneaking up on us like that. When we are with certain people who accept us for who we are, we dream that we’ll always be hanging out together, we make plans of going on adventures and trips with them and then new priorities emerge and things change. Best buddies from high school and college end up in different cities or even in different countries.
Even in today’s age of smartphones, we might press that like button on each other’s posts but we get too busy in our own life to actually have meaningful conversations with each other. Memories and inside jokes get forgotten with time without creating new ones to replace them. The people and relations in our life keep changing, hardly a few remain constant. It’s like we just keep drifting from one shore to another in search of something elusive.
So as my friend and I sipped our coffees we moved from reminiscing about the past to catching up on the present. We both have a new group of friends now and a new person with whom we share all the little things in our life. Essentially we have replaced each other place in our individual lives. We realised that we are not what we were to each other once upon a time, even though at that time we could never imagine that it would be like this. Whenever we think about the future, change seems so hard, but somehow with time it just happens without us even being conscious of it.
And then my friend got a call and as he picked it up to talk to the person on the other side, I got a chance to ponder over my thoughts while looking over at the beautiful scenery outside the window- birds frolicking over trees. I was able to spot a peacock high atop a tree in the distance screaming away loudly as they do. There was also a group of jungle babblers which funnily remind of the yellow colored Chuck from Angry Birds every time. A couple of purple sunbirds and brown rock chats were exploring treetop branches in search of insects or perhaps a sweet spot to rest for a while.
As I looked at them hopping from one branch to another, it occurred to me that we are all like trees and other people are like birds who come, spend some time with us and then eventually move on in their own life. Or maybe we all are like birds moving from person to person in order to find people with whom we can simply be ourselves. Or perhaps we all are trees for our own self and birds for other people since our own conscious self is the only thing that remains constant in the scheme of life while new faces keep joining us in our journey and some old faces keep disappearing time and again.
If we are trees then we should keep welcoming new birds with open branches, who knows if one of them decides to make their nest on us for a while and sing us sweet songs about their life of which even we happen to be an important part of. And even if one bird decides not to make a permanent nest on you worry not for there is no scarcity of birds on this planet. Some birds might just consider you a regular friend and come to visit you every day. Cherish your friends for what they bring to your life. And in case you are not the social kind, preferring your own company, enjoy the surroundings, the different patterns of clouds in the sky, the sun, the moon and the stars. Just keep going with the flow of the breeze.
Under Transformation 