The Tantalizing ‘Temporaries’

The Tantalizing ‘Temporaries’!

“Forever” and “Happily Ever After” are the way we have always seen a perfect life as. I feel it has got nothing and everything to do with those diabetically sweet fairy tales from childhood. The prince and the princess who spent a lifetime together, the couple that got married, the true-love kiss that brought the princess to life, the grandparents who grew old together, the brothers who got lost and met again to spend an eternity happily, this is all that we heard and read about.

What about the ones who didn’t? What about few people who just crossed your way? What about the lovers who couldn’t make it? What about them who assumed that all love went down the drain because it couldn’t end in a marriage? What about the relationships that ended in misunderstandings and what about those that never took off due to society? What about those who had too much love but a matching ego? What about awesome friendships that got lost in distance? What about people who could never forgive a loved one? What about a little love that remained for the ex-es even after marrying someone else? What about brothers who fought over property when they grew older but somewhere the childhood love kept haunting them? How about those who couldn't have their ‘forevers’?

My father often quotes his favorite poet, an age old one, where he talks about life being like a water bubble, life itself being the most temporary dimension and then we talk about ‘forevers’ and ‘eternities’. Although I myself am a believer of a few constants, a few things one’s life revolves around, but are they the only things in life? May be the centre remains the same all through, but what about the varying orbits? What about the distance we cover during a lifetime while the centres stay in their place, always there for you?

Perhaps the ‘temporaries’ do claim a space in our heads and heart, but how often do we mouth them? How often do we gather courage to tell our spouses that we still remember our first love? How often do we have the courage to look at our own journals from a decade back? How many of us can bring ourselves to listen to the music that we once loved and then hated for such a long time? How often does the silence not deafen us with sounds from the past? How many of us can think of our past without flinching? How many times have we avoided memories, good and bad alike? Good because they are not there any more and bad because we don’t want to revisit times when we fooled ourselves. How many of us will walk past the memory lane and accept the physical and mental scars, acknowledge their presence and then return to our forevers (which sadly again are temporaries)?

Do we really ever forget the butterflies in stomach when our first crush looked back at us? When our best friend (among the tens of ‘besties’ we had every year!) held our hands while we were literally thrown out of the classroom? When the first date (and nothing else) happened!!? When although someone might have broken our hearts, they were the ones who made it pump in the first place? How many of us can acknowledge that there were people, who came into our lives for a really short while, but changed it forever? That we are who we are, because they existed?

Life does come a full circle.

At times, people forget their anniversary, take each other for granted and hurt each other beyond measure while the relationship is going. They then forgive each other on an ‘anniversary’ , years later, after there technically cannot be an anniversary!

People promise an engagement and then move away the same year. They bump into the same person with their ‘another’ love of lifetime and look into each other’s’ eyes and know that they have been forgiven.

Couples cheat on each other, cry, fight and separate. Then one day, one of them becomes a parent with someone completely different. And yet that day, they look their kid and can’t think of christening them by any name other than what they decided in their very first relationship!

One day a mother who can’t explain her son’s explicit love for all the things she used to hate in her first boyfriend, calls him to say, “Now I understand you. Thank you and sorry”

One day a widower calls his girlfriend from college. When she picks up, he only says “Sorry…wrong number”. She forgives him for not being brave enough to marry her, but dies in peace of knowing that he wanted it as much as her.

Friends fighting over each other’s time get together after a decade and it doesn’t even take a moment to realize nothing ever changed. They just had to look for a little longer.

Brothers fight a lifetime for a property that doesn’t even matter and then beg for forgiveness from each other. A pat from the elder soothes the younger, just like old times in the playground.

Temporaries never really leave our side. We carry their burdens our whole life. Sometimes without realizing, sometimes in full consciousness. Time undoubtedly is lost in between all the commotion, but when we see back, perhaps all will be worth it. Because the first girlfriend/boyfriend cheated, you chose the next one more carefully. Because the first relation couldn’t work, you put more into the next one. Because the first ever relationship you thought will last a lifetime, the third one actually did! Because it couldn’t work with the wrong person, you found the right one. Perhaps there was nothing wrong ever with the ‘firsts’ and yet they didn’t work, you stopped dreaming and then you actually found your ‘Neverland’. Because you kept fighting for something worthless, you came across something that made you worthwhile! The challenge only is to accept the existence of temporaries and give ourselves time to absorb its importance.

One day we would realize that destinations are truly overrated. It’s the journey that matters. All the hands that we held in the process matter. All the smiles that we gathered, matters. All the moments that we thought were permanent and which then became temporary matter.  Scars that make us more beautiful and memories that make us stronger matter.

You value it because they don’t exist any more. If there was no end to life, no uncertainty around every day, would Gods still be jealous of the human life form? Would we really rate permanents over temporaries? It’s commas vs full stops and when you realize every full stop is just a comma, extended a little longer. After all, our day is a mayfly’s ‘forever’!

We are a little of every hand that ever caressed our head, a little of every voice that soothed our loneliness, a little of every smile that adorned our day, a little of every hand that reached out for us in melancholy, a little of every moment that made our lives worth living, a little of every person who touched our hearts.....They say, nothing is permanent, and yet "forever" is what we want, "permanent" is what we find enriching....Not at all challenging the importance of things that we hold constant since whenever we have them, but in the ever changing world, should we sometimes reflect on the temporary and embrace them with all the love they deserve? Perhaps it's time......

The best part is, like the constants in your life, once you had a temporary, no one can take it back from you. Temporaries also stay with you, FOREVER! J