Everyone dreams of living a ‘perfect life’ – starting a perfect family with the love of one’s life… having plenty of money… a home in the world’s most striking location, a brand new SUV etc. etc. We all have dreamt about such a lifestyle at some point in our lives, in fact for most of us such a lifestyle becomes the sole purpose of living. There is no harm in dreaming BIG, dreaming about the apparently impossible and then going on to achieve it. Even if death were to come in the process, one can stand tall and claim that he/she was living a life of his/her dreams.
It won’t be wrong to say that this kind of life style is idealistic and idealism and realism are two different phenomena. Still there’s no harm in having an idealistic mindset, because failure is a word to be found in the dictionary of pessimists. But what if I were to tell you that this dream isn’t real – and this mindset is just an illusion… No matter how hard you try, you will only be striving for ‘nothingness’ for the so called ‘perfect life’ is fake, non-existential, a dream within a dream.
At every step in our lives, we are posed with multiple choices. The sum total of these individual choices we make shapes up or fashions our life. Choices are confusing-the more we have, the more confused we become. Imagine yourself in a shop full of clothing products, you have a certain budget and you are faced with greatly many options. What to buy and which one to let go, which factors to prefer and which ones to ignore… the fight goes on for a while until you lock your final choice. At the end of the day you may even be satisfied with your purchase and may even be heard, shouting out loud `` I made the perfect choice…`` The question is, REALLY ?…
We as humans often get lost in `all that glitters`… we tend to forget moments lived in distress and become slaves of the good times. No one really bothers to think about the roads not taken, or the choices not made or the options overlooked when times are good. We praise or criticize the path we took and assume the one not taken to be ` A BIG MISS` (if the choice backfires) or crown it as a `LIFE CHANGING OPPORTUNITY` (if the choice made, works out).
The ignorance isn`t of a great magnitude in the above scenario for the thing overlooked is merely cloths, but let’s alter the situation à bit and assume that the choices have to be made between people- human beings. Life is a constituent of moments – breaths that are limited. Just like money is a constraint in a shop full of clothes so are these moments or breaths. And just like you have to choose one or two outfits in the end so is this life where you have to live certain moments and let go of others. Life cannot be perfected because compromises have to be made - where you will be a reason behind smiles, tears will flow in certain eyes because of you. There will be those standing by you and those condemning you, those who will celebrate your success and those who will curse it. While you will be with certain people, there will be others you will be unwillingly ignoring. You can live a life imagining & tagging it to be the perfect most but at the end of the day you will always have regrets when you lie on your death bed- about things not done, people not met, paths not taken, smiles not spread, hearts broken – in short about a life that you could have lived differently…
