Existing or Living? (Monday Moments #47)

          Sitting relaxed on a comfortable swing chair facing the beach, he was wondering about his life. He thought about the time when he was a kid. Growing up was the only thing he wanted. And now that he was a 50-year-old adult, all he wanted was to be a child. He was having drifting thoughts lately. They were about his life. How it was supposed to turn out and how it actually did. He remembered how when you need something really you could do just about anything to achieve it. And once you have achieved it, you don’t even enjoy it. It’s just like those toys. As a child he would cry for weeks for a toy. When he got it, he would play with it for a day and then just keep it away. It’s just like when he secretly loved a girl who was in a relationship. And when she broke up with her boyfriend, he thought, “What did I see in her anyway?” All his life he observed that human beings plan a lot, run behind things which we’re not even sure we want and just exist. That’s not living. That’s just existing. When in school, we want to go to college. When in college, we want to work. When we work, we enjoy our early years. When we have worked for what seems like 50 years, we finally think.We open our brain and allow it to wander. What has my life been about? What am I doing? Do I want to live this way? Do I even want to live in this country forever? Do I want to do this job forever? Do I want to live with this person forever? All these questions kept him awake at night. From the dream of being a travel writer to actually becoming a corporate machine. When did that happen? Was he living or just existing? When he found these answers, he was already on the Malibu beach writing about his travel experiences. And that time he knew he was living. 

(‘Monday Moments’ is a blog series wherein I write about an incident or a moment in a short paragraph. It’s not a story, but just a short description to express and explore the most common joys and also the uncommon miseries.)