How much longer....

There are many things we yearn for as children but in most cases, the years make us wiser and strip away our childish fondness for them. 

But a few of childhood fantasies remain as points in that 'list of things to do someday' - a list that we hold onto in that secret compartment of our life, waiting, hoping for a better future. A day when we will be ready to take on more responsibilities, to move beyond the pressing concerns of our own existence and to try something new. A day when we will have a plan and a backup ready. We hold onto that list because the rational part of us tells us we are not yet there. Not yet ready to take additional responsibility. Not yet ready to spread wider, lest we spread ourselves too thin. 

And so they remain - these childhood fascinations, that grow on us and return in occasional pangs of yearning and envy. 

Having a pet, or more specifically - a dog of my own has been one such fascination for me. As a child, we (me and my accomplice in crime, my brother) tried every excuse in the book to get ourselves one but our tricks never really worked and my parents always had a good excuse in my asthmatic lungs. 

Today, decades later, I still want one; but I hold myself back. I wait for a better time - a time when I would have more time to take on additional responsibility. A time when I would have more stability and more clarity. A time when I would be able to give more time, more space and more of me to that dream.

But then I meet her and that childhood yearning returns - ever more powerfully like the hunger pang that has been denied for long. I love walking with her, sometimes unaware of who is leading whom. I love her whining,  as she runs from one window to another when she bids me goodbye. I love her paws and her muzzle as she gently nudges me into patting her. I love how as a 14 month old, she ran scared from the ocean but was soon trying to intimidate the wild waves  into submission, attempting to save her master and friend from the menacing ocean. My heart goes out to her when she scours the grounds frantically looking for us - her friends, running from one end to the other, relentlessly. Who is lost, I wonder! We or her...? I love her when she majestically stands by the car's window with the blustery wind racing her by. I love her silliness when she bumps her head trying to reach out to me in the moving car only to be patted. 

The world does look a lot different when you are look at it from her height. 

People seem taller, buildings seem gigantic and things are moving so much faster. And yet, she fights for us, holds on tight to us - unable to let go. She might forget me in a month or perhaps in a year, if I am lucky. We have, after all, met only a handful of times.  But what she shares with her 'master' is something else altogether. Its a bond unlike any other. In one moment she is the child who likes to be appreciated and cooed to. At another, she is the adult scouring through the crowds looking for her lost charge. At one time, she is the defenseless puppy being intimidated by the other dogs as she runs to your protective fold. At another, though, she follows you into the scary ocean, fearlessly, because she wants to protect you. 

She might forget me in a month or perhaps in a year, if I am lucky. We have, after all, met only a handful of times. But in those few days, she has become a part of me - a part of my dreams, a part of my future - like nothing else. I don't know if I have clarity about much else in my future but I do know, that one day, it will have a dog - as silly and intelligent as her, as loving and lovable as her. The question is - how much longer should-could-or-would I wait? 

PS - Having a giant teddy, a canvas to paint on and a garden are the other childhood fantasies of mine still buried on that crumpled sheet of paper.... they are all waiting for another day and another time. 

The question is: how much longer? 

IF

IF

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

- Kipling

A broken world...

Sometimes the world appears broken but the problem is in your glasses. So check your glasses before you complain...

The glass menagerie

“Memory takes a lot of poetic licence. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart. The interior is therefore rather dim and poetic.” ― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie 

“Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am not discouraged.” ― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie 

“People go to the movies instead of moving. Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them.” ― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie 

“But here there was only hot swing music and liquor, dance halls, ban, and movies, and sex that hung in the gloom like a chandelier and flooded the world with brief, deceptive rainbows.” ― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie 

“People are not so dreadful when you know them. That's what you have to remember! And everybody has problems, not just you, but practically everybody has got some problems. You think of yourself as having the only problems, as being the only one who is disappointed. But just look around you and you will see lots of people as disappointed as you are.” ― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie 

“People go to the movies instead of moving.” ― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie 

“The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches. I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass.” ― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie 

“You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it.” ― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie 

Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.” ― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie 

“Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.” ― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie 

“Time is the longest distance between two places.” ― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie