Beyond our daily lives, somewhere lies real life, Beyond our horizons, somewhere lies the real world and Beyond the silence, one can hear the universe speak ©️ShashikantDudhgaonkar

Many a people are lost to us, because they do not appear at the centre of our vision or mind-space for a long time. They hover somewhere at the periphery but never attracting enough attention. Though they were very much part of our lives, in a tiny way or big way a few years or decades ago. Those old moments of camaraderie and bonding seem to be lost and gone. But then that’s life. We on our path. They on theirs. And though we both know each other and know exactly, what we think about each other, somehow we never meet. Never feel a strong urge to meet. Busy in our very own lives. Nothing wrong here. Everyone goes through a phase in life wherein they are too busy for anything else, and time management becomes essential. So we cut down on a lot of things. Especially those things which we would have loved to do but then they don’t add any material value to life. And slowly without realising, we get used to this way of living. Deeply imbibing that adaptive behaviour and making it a routine for the rest of life. Then suddenly one day, we come to realise that we won’t be able to see or meet, some people from our past. Never again. End of life. End of that persons existence along with his feelings, dreams, desires (fulfilled unfulfilled), thoughts, achievements, highs and lows. And regrets are all that we are left with. For the rest of our life.

These moments of silence of the mind when there are absolutely no thoughts and we are trying to digest the news and make sense of it, are the ones that make us think for long.

These are all the thoughts that ran through my mind on hearing about the death of a friend with whom I had lost contact for last 20 years. Just felt I should share them. Some of the readers might recognise them as most of us have felt this way at some point in our lives.

Beyond the Horizon

Do we need to think on life and death and beyond

Our tubular vision, focused on day to day tasks

Relative importance we accord to people and issues

That may not affect us at all, materially at least

But are hanging there somewhere

Beyond the horizon of our thoughts

Do we live like any organism

Eat, thrive, reproduce, raise kids and die

Or do we also need to add some more colours to our lives

Maybe shades of grey or hues of bright or just plain white

And what about sounds.

Do we need to hear some tingling bells, whistling winds or birds songs

Or a dead leaf floating, falling on grass

Do we need to hear the silent whispers

Of the wind caressing our back

As we sit in silence, watching clouds float past

We keep on hearing a lot of thunder and lightning

Voices, vehicles and horns

Even if we don’t want to hear them

Do we need to look beyond our field of vision

Look up at the sky and the horizon

And beyond the jagged mountains

Where our eyes stop

Where the lives of people we knew sometime, just start

And the lives of people were never knew

Will never know

Should we ponder on it, just for a while

Maybe we should, maybe we should not

Or maybe once in a while

©️ShashikantDudhgaonkar