CHASING SHADOWS

 

SHADOWS HAVE MORE TO SAY THAN LIGHT

A resourced archer was passing by a village in his way back to home. He had to cross one dense forest in between. The forest and its thick and thin journey were known to him, so he was not expecting any surprises in between. Every tree and lane felt like his own.

He must have just started his forest journey, whereby he saw bullseyes at each tree, with an arrow exactly at the center hole. Being an archer himself, he was amazed to see such wonderful piece of work. He was a master in his art so he could not digest such convincing spot-on results of all arrows at center for every bullseye. He could not move ahead without acknowledging the master of this art. He kept himself waiting for some time. An hour later, he saw a man coming towards his side. He asked this stranger if he knows the artist who targeted these many bullseyes. The stranger replied, “I did this”.

The man got completely blank. He churned his mind at fastest speed but he could not figure how this stranger, who seemed to be mad by his behavior, his clothes, his gestures could literally even attempt such kind of art. He swallowed his question marks and gently asked, “I am surprised to see such work. I am an archer too. I understand that one may target one or two bullseyes at center but not all. How did you do this?”

The stranger replied, “Who said that I targeted all arrows on bullseyes? I place the arrow first and draw the circle around later!” The man understood the conviction this stranger was trying to explain. He again interrogated him, “I got your theory but why did you replicate your action on every tree? What does it indicate?” The stranger answered, “It indicates that there cannot be a single source of happiness. It is we, who are supposed to duplicate sources that leads to happiness and satisfaction. We are not superlatives to target all arrows in the center, hence we have to multiply as much as we can. What we cannot, should not get overlapped on what we can. Learning to live with given happiness and encircling our time and life around it, is the sole way to eternal happiness.

Supporting above narrative, I strongly believe that none of us exactly knows how to live within our confined set of people and pleasures. We chase the irregularities, temporariness and short-term goals, leading ourselves to long-term traps. We investigate on floaters, though being genuine. We dig to find out unknowns knowing the fact that it will not last longer. We ignore the promising facts of our life, like our instincts, our thoughts and our moral beliefs which constitute our very existence.

No matter how far we go, whatever we acquire in search of more, how high we get positioned, the emotion of being just ourselves by heart can never be replaced. The feeling of “me” is much more than any chase ever accomplished so far.