THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;"

Shakespeare said it years back and I remember it even today. After fifteen years of reading these lines, today I sit down to deconstruct them a little differently. A thought that has been lurking in my head for the past few days is that, while we all have a role to play in this world , we have a role to play in each other’s life too.

Every person’s duration in the other person’s life is predestined and he or she is in our life for a reason. Till the time that reason / goal is not met the person keeps walking in and out but does not disappear.

We might play the blame game all our lives but every person teaches us a lesson. A lesson for life. The only difference is some teach the hard way.

The sad thing is, we are too busy to comprehend what the person has taught us. How he or she has made us a better person? Sometimes we are so preoccupied with what I call the ‘blame game’ we cannot pause and reflect to see what I learned from this person. We might misconstrue the word learning and still get nasty and say ‘I learnt never to trust’ but again that cannot be the ultimate truth because there has to be and always is a positive learning even from the nastiest and the most painful relationship. Again the difference is in the way we decipher or want to comprehend the situation.

The beauty of it all is that, there are times when people just walk in and out of life all the time and you are left amazed, viewing your life as a thoroughfare. The reason why this happens is because the mission with which the person was made to enter your life has not been completed. Till the time that objective is not met, he or she will keep reappearing and you can do nothing about it. The difference is that while all this is happening we remain baffled, we never know why it’s happening or what the mission is. We see it only when the person is gone.

Some of you might contest what I say, but it just might be worthwhile to sit down with a cup of coffee, in you balcony. Looking at the glistening rain drops, slowly walk down memory lane and think about what were the good things each person who came in your life taught you. Before you know it, you would be smiling seeing the miles you have travelled.