Subtle Drilling Of Life

Today, like every day is weird and special in its ways. The constant voices in my head and the annoying noises outside has already stormed my brain, yet, for some unknown reason I feel like tapping the keyboard with all the energy I have, and to scribble this note with all those words that have been speaking loud in my head since morning. I want you to read, because I am sure this isn’t just happening with me.

Perplexed by my own thoughts, I went to my mother to ask a plain yet intricate question. Our mothers have always been better than Google and wise than any book. I asked her, “Is life a problem or life has problems?” Without much thinking she answered positively saying that, “How can life ever be a problem? Don’t you see yourself as a life? How can you be a problem? Life has obstacles, and there always will be, in some or the other way, so that you learn about the opportunities.” After she cleared my thoughts about life and problem she asked me, “What are you up to now?” Like always, I replied, “You know my tiny brain over thinks, everyday.” To this she said nothing. She is a mother after all. She knows it all.

So, today around 11 in the morning, the constant and ear bleeding noise from the drill machine not only gave me a headache, but surprisingly some wise thoughts too. (See here, the over thinking part is justified.) Even you would have got furious by the drilling noise during reconstructions. After a headache and temporary deafness, we would say, “I hate this. I hate reconstruction.” But then, everybody wants to reconstruct their houses some point in time; when it is done we would contradict ourselves and say,” Ah, I love the idea of reconstruction. Look, how everything shines and looks beautiful.” This is how we are living our lives as well.

You must have been wearied by the sameness in your life. After this thought, you would have felt exhausted even while doing nothing, and then you decided to change or prioritize few things so that your life gets a direction. But the important thing here is that, does it come easily? Does the work of prioritization that simple? Does moving away from old things to new easy? Does a reconstruction in your life easy? No, it is as painful as much as the noise of that drill machine.

The wall is our life, the one we try to build the way we want throughout our lives. Bricks are like parasites that stick to the wall. Just like the drill machine breaks each brick of the wall, and makes space so that a new wall can be build, the same happens with life. The drill machine is you and all the hardships, obstacles, loss, failure, depression, anxiety, fear, sorrow, incompetent, disappointment, defeat, frustration and weakness are the bricks that build up the negative wall for cowards. The noise that the drill machine produces while breaking down the wall is the pain of our hard work. If we want the drill machine to break all the bricks so that we can build up a new wall and paint it with the color of our choice, we have to bear the noise it produces. Similarly, if we want to grow by defeating all hardships that come in life, we will have to bear the pain of the hard work or else there will only be pain from regrets which are undoubtedly more painful. It wouldn’t be easy at first, maybe not the second time as well, but gradually we’ll become strong enough to break them down. That’s how our new wall will be build. That’s how our life will be what we wanted it to be and how we wanted it to be.

I just know that tomorrow when again I will hear the noise of the drill machine, it will remind me that I have to break down my old wall to build a new one where I can put all my happy pictures.

– Kritika Vashist