Look at how the cold clock ticks in sullen agony eating all the fresh new years like a hungry shark on hunt. Look at these deciduous days diminishing like smoke, fading months and falling moments, withering like grass. Look at life! All our years flee until finally, only a year, a month, a day is left to us. We fall short in time, and death silences our senses. Nothing remains now, no life, no dusk, no words, no pride.
Life rolls on like dry autumn leaves being shed off from an old poplar tree, falling without faith into woods of winderness where they know no night or day. In deep autumnal melancholy, the leaves are first humiliated by the light from heavens, then being trampled on the effigy of autumn, they start weeping and falling alone, one by one like tears. Shaken, beaten and bruised, the wind leaves the tree in empty shadow just like our life being shattered with time leaving us crazily, fleetingly and suddenly alone in the end. However, the leaves, confident of their destiny, dance their own dance of freedom and believe in their own story of freewill just like the protagonist of a fairy tale oblivious to the truth of its existence and clueless to the mercy of forces that are beyond its understanding.
Aren’t we just like the autumn leaves of the old poplar, forever floating, believing that we have a destiny somewhere, when all we’re doing is being played upon by forces beyond our comprehension? Isn’t time like the autumn wind, consuming us little by little until nothing is left of us? The time that makes rivers rush and trees fall reminds us of death which is in fact, the sheer truth of life. Though time is impartial to trees, stones and mermaids, we baptised its children into days, months and years, we divided this cosmic elusive truth like that in a book and a new page turns in this book of life and “”New Year”” arrives.
The best of blessings of being human is our gift of storytelling. It’s on that gift that we enjoy in the possibilities. It is what keeps us burning in the winter and dreaming in the dust. We sing slogans, dream of a new day, gallop through waters, dream of heavens and get up in the morning with new hopes. Sadly, the very pattern that grips our memory shows up, every new day we live in the past that holds us and we project it onto our future. Only dreams change, nothing else does. Past turns into a prison.
In autumn, the poplar leaves wear colors of rainbows under the sky of ample sadness. No matter how mournful the song of wind is, the leaves dance in all their magnificence. They accept their dice, have no grudges over the mighty wind that crumbles them apart and have no memories of any misery in the past. They accept their fate as it is. Perhaps, talking about newness is absurdity to the leaves that rejoice in the very nature of existence as it is- without doubts, without lament. To the flying birds, hungry clouds, naked flowers, fresh soil and to the curve of rainbow, every moment is new, every second is a treasure in itself. There is no rue of past or fret for future, just the moment, the right-now and they enjoy it in all exhilaration.
And yet again, because it’s our storytelling that makes all the difference- what we tell ourselves and how we tell it, makes us humans. Instead of being hurt over our past anguish and replaying our sad songs in guilt, remorse and fear over and over again, lets shed them off once and for all. Lets shed vanity, wrath, fear and pain, so that whatever remains shall peacefully guide us in this new year and the idea of celebrating a new year to relinquish our past burdens becomes a fallacy. Lets live gracefully in the silent space between earth and moon. Let happiness be everywhere whether we fall or flourish and let joy be in our bread and brick. Let goodness prevail in the air we have and what we have of earth such that the world becomes a true grandeur and every moment, a celebration in itself. Lets grow! A very happy new year.
Question answer with Naveen
1. Tell us more about you.
Curious, a lover of science and poetry, my name is Naveen. Like my name, I love trying new things. Currently, I am a 3rd year medical student at IOM. Born in a distant rural place in Gulmi, I aim for reaching the stars. My hobby is learning new things. I have learned unique things in life besides studies. I can say English and Nepali alphabets in reverse. I memorize everything that I find interesting like Sanskrit mantras, speeches of great men such as Charlie Chaplin, Theodore Roosevelt; definition of so many things from movies, motivational speeches and movie dialogues. There was this time when I wanted my name in Guiness book of world record, something and I memorized the value of pie upto 200. I really love adventures. I have done paragliding, Bunjee Jumping and mountain trekking. I do pencil sketches, extensive graphic designing, write and design newsletters (Like this), teach medical entrance preparing students and play a piano. I am sincere and I work very hard.
2. What was your thought when you apply to Wordism competition?
I love thinking. Sometimes, these thoughts cannot handle the magnitude of randomness they have and they burst like wildfire in my writing. Seeing a writing competition on facebook just a day before its deadline, I wrote whatever was wanting to come out of me
3. What are your dreams and aspiration?
I am an INFJ and I aspire to be a great man in future. To live content with small means.
To seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion. To be worthy not respectable, and wealthy not rich. To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly, to listen to stars, birds, babes, and sages with open heart, to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.
4. How do you feel being the Wordism Runner Up of Chaitra
I feel glad for being a runner up of Wordism’s essay contest for the month of Chaitra. I wholeheartedly thank ‘Youth Legend’ for letting me speak through my words and wish good luck for all the endeavours that are to come.
5. Anything you want to say about who is reading this!
Keep looking for the stars.
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