Are you Writing Your Story?

At the beginning of this year, I made a resolution—to deliberately stop measuring my days by degrees of productivity and instead, opt to experience them by the degree of my presence.

In a way, I think I needed to learn it the hard way, that how we spend our everyday moments is exactly how we spend our entire lives. In the productivity-obsessed age of our times, it might be brushed aside as a worthless idea, but, come to think of it, the concept of mindfulness has always been a central theme of many philosophical traditions.

It’s interesting how the very nature of our thoughts leads us to pine for the impossible things in the future while we easily throw away our present moments as if they never mattered to us at all. And yet, this moment before us is the only reality that we are assured of, while the future remains as elusive as ever, wrapped in a mystery, only to unfold when the time comes.

While we seem to be busy crying for the moon, we remain oblivious to the stories of our lives that are unfolding right before our eyes. The recurrent theme underpinning our lives is our inability to fully inhabit the present. That is what keeps us from being happy.

How often do we even realise that we are actually writing our story… right here and right now!? 

Instead, we tend to copiously write down our future plans on paper and put our lives on hold for another day in the distant future that is yet to dawn. Nothing, absolutely nothing seems more futile and meaningless in our current times, than to relegate our hopes and dreams for the future, given that the uncertainty of life has now come to stay with us, as a constant reminder. There is a terrible sense of finality in the thought, but the truth is our days, are numbered. It’s all a matter of time!

Now, tell me, would it not be wonderful to pro-actively be a part of our story here and now, while it is still unfolding? Couldn’t today be the day to do all that we’ve been putting away for tomorrow or the day after?

What if we completely focused on the now, taking whatever it takes to realise our dreams and work towards seeing them unfold? At least a few of our dreams that matter the most?

My question is—why not?

A concoction of courage, determination and that wonderful word called gumption might just be the thing to get us started on the journey, to reflect within, and choose the elements of our choice, so we can write our own story and lead it to our desired conclusion. At least, in parts where it matters the most. That way, when our time comes, we’d know that we’ve realised a few things in life that we’ve desired with our heart and soul, things that are of our own making, that are borne out of our own efforts? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Now, here’s the thing. We may not often realise it often, but, we do have a choice in writing our story. A least, in those parts that mean everything to us.

The moot question is—Are we ready to write our story?

This piece of non-fiction is based on the word prompt ‘STORY’ and has been written for #FictionMonday, a blog hop hosted by my friend Vinitha Dileep on her blog, ‘Reflections’.