Enjoy the growth – Like everything else, it flies by

Maybe there was a time everything happened, all at once. Maybe there was a time when the waters were not so still. When you were challenged every day. When you read voraciously and the compassion within your heart grew like a quiet thief slowly stealing your indifference away. Maybe you blogged every week. Every other week. Maybe you worked eighty-five hours a week and forgot how what it was like to do something for yourself. Maybe you forgot how to take walks, how it felt to play frisbee in the park, pick up the phone and talk to your friends, play games, take photos, enjoy the summer and good food.

Maybe there was a time when you cried quietly in the staff breakroom because your boss yelled at you in the confines of his office, said that you will never amount to anything and hung you out to dry. Maybe you lost someone very dear to your heart and you wished every day you could turn back time. Maybe the death of your expectations weighed on your ankles dragging you into bed for months, into frequent restroom breaks and ultimately down a slippery slope of lost time. You looked in the mirror and you couldn’t identify the person looking back at you. Maybe you were sad, terrified and felt betrayed.

Don’t forget, that while all of this was happening, you sought out and helped someone who, just like you, was also struggling. Maybe it was a smile after a long day or offering to carry their heavy bag for them or bringing them a cup of water when they broke down crying. Maybe you hugged their little broken pieces together. Don’t forget, that while all this was happening you continued to remain inspired to read, to grow as a person and most of all, to continue to do things that matter.

So breathe.

You have probably always known deep down that struggle is the biggest driver of change.

The greatest glory in living lies not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail. – Nelson Mandela

Believe me when I tell you that there will be a time when you sit down with a cup of your morning coffee for a few minutes. When you will walk over to water the plants and watch the flowers in your balcony. You will breathe in and inhale everything around you – the endlessness of time, the permanence of your cozy apartment, the sense that life has slowed down. You will stretch your legs out on the sofa and watch Frasier in the evenings as the sky turn shades from a bright yellow to orange, then a deep blue and finally black. You will take yourself to bed and wriggle out of your throw and into a blanket. You will call your family and friends far away and tell them that you miss them, that you long to see them.

There will be a time when you will go to the bookstore after work on Fridays and hang out with your colleague and talk endlessly about your favorite books and have coffee at six in the evening because when you wake up on a Saturday morning won’t matter. So you will go to bed at midnight, jus because you can.

And then there will be a time when you won’t have the time to slow down and think. You will be living all of it, there won’t be time to think. Everyone you want will be with you, in your life.

There will be a time when time itself will be what you want it to be. When you will get back everything good that slowly trailed away from you, everything worth having you left behind and forgot all about. Enjoy the growth, because just like the six PM coffees, it won’t last forever.

❤ Aarthi