What we are looking for

“the looking itself is a trace
of what we are looking for.

But we have been more like the man
who sits on his donkey
and asks the donkey where to go.”
(Rumi, ‘A Bowl Fallen From The Roof’)

That’s exactly what I was searching for, but wasn’t able to put in words…Rumi helped me. I have been questioned hundreds of times, mainly from the near & dear ones, what am I looking for? No answer or some feeble answers which ends with photography, film-making, writing articles and scripts or reading poetry. I think life has started the journey on the very day I was born, but the destination is not known so far. With every passing day, it seems like the fog will disappear and I’ll be able to read the board where destiny has scribbled my destination. But alas, with every passing day, the mist becomes little clearer, but someone says in my ears that I need to walk few more miles to see the board. And that’s making the journey more interesting.

How many of us really question ourselves what we are looking for? Most of us are actually fooling ourselves by keeping busy either with the day job, loving undeserving lovers, or raising children. Once you make this question to life, certainly life starts showing the indications. Probably those are the omens of life that we need to follow. Paulo Coelho wrote in ‘The Alchemist’ that those omens are audible only in childhood. But as we grow up by disobeying them, their sound becomes feeble for us to listen and finally they disappear as we too disappear in ‘keeping ourselves busy’. But I guess they are always there, we just need to spend more and more time with ourselves and those omens will be audible again.

But it’s never late; even if you are at the crossroads of life & death. The mist will be clear today or tomorrow or the day after. The journey continues, but this time without asking the donkey.