I don't know if it's irony or life just laughing at you; I don't know if it is with everyone or fate just chose me to experiment on; I don't know if the awareness of it now is a blessing or a curse - but things are never, as they seem to be at any particular point in life.
Long ago when I 'had' all the trappings of a successful life - job, marriage, one's own home - I felt like a failure, I felt I was living another person's life - a person I barely knew, and didn't particularly liked much. Now, when apparently, I have not the things that define us in society; I feel content within myself. Sometimes when all what separates us from others; our status amongst a certain class, our bearing with the backing of family connections and influence, our successful spouses and the manifestation of these 'achievements' in the material possessions of life, we still feel as though an important part is missing; a part of something which we cannot put our finger on to, yet we keenly feel an emptiness within, a estrangement with our surroundings, a kind of disassociation. And we yearn for something other than what we have.
One can argue that man is never happy with his situation and always desires what he has not, rather than being content with he does; but that is not what I am trying to say; my stance is, at times what we believe would make us happy, what we are taught by the world to accept as essentials for a good life is not what necessarily make us content and at ease in life. It is also not the absence of troubles and pain that ensure a happier state - and examples abound around us if we choose to take heed. It is an acceptance of life at it's own terms - this could be and usually is an hard endeavor, for everyday living is an exhausting task if nothing else. We are endlessly beset with 'problems' that need solutions, while solutions are scarce. The business of living is much like a game where strategies have to be made on the spot according to the situation on the field - spontaneously. And we don't usually have the luxury of time, the periscopic vision of the future and the rational presence of mind at our disposal to make 'perfect' decisions. By our own measure we do make 'perfect' decisions at 'a' point in time; whether they turn out to be 'perfect' in all times of our life is another question altogether.
I believe I have now just begun to grasp the meaning of what the Sufis and sages have always propounded - sometimes we need to lose it all, to find ourselves.
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