Finding Life

What do you pack in your bag when you are out to set up a whole new life? That was what I was thinking, packing my bags for college- gosh, was it four years ago?
Travelling always exaggerates all of my emotions, maybe it’s the briefness, the fact that everything is going to be over, soon.
You will laugh at where I draw philosophy from, but Deidara in Naruto got it right, when he said that the beauty of life is in its impermanence. The feeling that you are going to lose it all soon, makes you love and hate harder; it spikes your sorrow and joy and wakes up your sense of beauty.
All I took to Chandigarh was a bag full of my life, a bag to represent my life of 17 and a half years, while I stepped into this new world.
Did I become a different person, in my three years there? I think so, in some ways. Places give you their own colour. People add to you their own flavour. I am different in every new place, different with every new person.
But this is a story of how I went to a new place with only a bag full of things that connected it to my old world. I dreaded living in a new place, without family or friends, for three whole years.
But I made friends; I even had what could have been a very odd family.
It’s amazing that wherever you step into the world, you find people who you should have met ages ago, who you know to trust, who make your life in that place worth living, who give you reason to wake up every morning and get out into life.
Three years is a long time, long enough to forget about impermanence, at least if you are looking at it from the beginning, not the end. From the end, three years is just too short a time. So I may have forgotten the sharp feelings that come with quickly passing time. Days slipped into days while I wrote out new chapters of my life.
Now at the end of my trip, I look back and everything is tinged with sweetness and sadness. I know I lived those three years well, all the triumphs and failures, all the tears and crazy laughter. I cherish each one of them now.
I gave away three years of my life to Chandi, and in return, I got sweet memories, a healing heart, and friends for life.
Travelling still spikes up all my emotions. I guess you could call it ‘heightened living’. But I love the feeling, and I love to find new worlds to give a piece of my life to. And I love the people I find, who I know I should have met ages ago, who I know to trust instinctively, who are your friends and family for that span of time when you are with them.
Thanks guys, for being my friends and family, for getting me out of bed every morning (sometimes not so easy, I know), and for letting me live my life with you in a way I am happy with now.