Don't let instinct go extinct

Somebody said, "Time is the biggest healer." All farce - that very time is robbing me of all that I had. My innocence, my ignorance, my instinct . . . and 1 day my loved ones would be gone too. I do not want new threads to replace the old ones . . . I'd rather go with the last one as it snaps . . . and ensure none behind my back looks at time to heal their wounds, as I break away . . . . . into oblivion.

Read this status on Facebook and had to reach out and say to the guy who wrote it-

Your innocence will be replaced by awareness, ignorance by wisdom and, instinct by intent. The key is to not just dream but make 'em come to life! 

My aim was not to sound preachy, but to give words to voice inside me. I hear this voice whenever a fellow foot-traveler sighs in frustration, whenever I see someone wasting to routine what can be or could have been a life less ordinary, whenever I look in the mirror and cannot meet my own eyes because of the choices I have made in life.


This voice, a very condescending, impatient voice, and yet one that infuses me with positive energy, says, "There is no one, but yourself, who is tying you to your choices. Take an eraser and redo your life the way you think it should be. The mistakes, or rather, experiments gone awry, need not be the end all of your life. The chains are for you to break, the skies are for you to reach."


The hills are for me to tread.... and tread them I will.


I want to reach out to all my fellow foot-travelers- when you feel faint about the course of this journey called life think of people like Ruskin Bond. Bond chose a life of writing simple, humble books and living in a nondescript house in Mussourie over, well, a normal life. He did not measure his capabilities in the flasks of educational qualification, neither did he measure his success in the amount of money he was able to amass or books he was able to print. The first step was to take out the hesitation of not following the norms, to remove the fear that one feels while doing their own thing- however insignificant it is to the world. Ruskin Bond may not be the most acclaimed writer in the world, or even in India, but he is a favorite of so many of us foot-travelers.  Isn't that an achievement- touching another human being's heart?


The point to all this is, there is no set formula to this road to being just yourself. The advocators of material success surely may have a theory to how its done (it is, after all, being taught in most of our schools & colleges), but we don't. We know that the idea is to take the long, winding, lush green, fragrant path to what ever the destination- the destination doesn't even matter. But each one has to discover their own way of doing that. There is no guiding light, no pole star. There can't be. A painter can't create his masterpiece for winning critical acclaim, he has to do so for his own passions. A foot-traveler has to develop an awareness about those passions of his. He has to be wise to the lures of fitting-in with the milieu. He has to give intent to his instinct. So that his instinct does not become extinct.