Musings

 The pitter patter of rain on the window, the gurgling of water down the sink, the feel of the warm shower when it hits your skin on a cold winter morning, the smell of the wet grass on a dewy morning. Water has power, it has energy like all things in this world; animate and inanimate. The flow of water rejuvenates life, it makes me feel alive when I take a shower and all of my senses are activated. Drinking cold water on a searing summer day is perhaps one of the best feelings in the world. It pumps life back into the lifeless husk of dead plants and life would cease to exist without it.  Water has a special relationship with anxiety. Where in water marches onwards, mightily charging into the unknown taking the path of least resistance, anxiety perhaps is the compete opposite to it. It over thinks, it questions every choice and it doubts itself to the point of self defeat. Anxiety is not all bad, just as in water is not all good. Rather, it is how we perceive them that matter...

 The minute Jacques looked in to her eyes, his heart started thumping faster, blood rushed to his head and his knees grew weak. It was a sunny morning and he was standing in the middle of an office building. Warm light slightly filtered through the small windows on each wall and there was the slight buzzing and muttering of people everywhere around him. The office floor was roughly the size of 2 football grounds placed lengthwise and it was already beginning to show some wear and tear from the years it had been in operation. More than 30 years by Jacques’s calculations, this was the head office and had been built the same time the company came into existence. Jacques slightly jerked his head to get his thoughts back on track. Who was this woman who had just caught his eye? What about her was calling out to him? He maintained his stare and she matched it looking him straight into his eyes daring him to break eye contact.  He walked back to his seat after the stare down with the...

Families are strolling in the park. It is sunny and there is a cold breeze in the air. Kids are running out, puppies barking and cats chasing each other. The sun's rays are peaking through the thick green shrubbery of the trees. A man walks into the park and squints his eyes at the sun. “Too sunny”, he musters as he starts doing his stretches and strolling down the walker’s track. He is caring enough to give the fast joggers the right of way and to let kids stray across his path without grumbling about it. Even on such a beautiful day, the man can find nothing to be grateful for, nothing to appreciate. He sneers angrily at the birds chirping in the trees as if his sneering would make them shut up. The birds kept on chirping, blissfully unaware of the man strolling beneath. After he had stretched and strolled for a good 5 minutes, the man stopped in a corner, stooped down and tightened his laces. It was time. He stretched his neck for the last time, in a bit of a reptilian fashion, ...

 A river crashing into the rocks, the whooshing sound of the waves as it fell apart when they hit the rocks. A child standing at the edge of those rocks, staring into the abyss. It is cold, he feels the cold underneath his jacket and attempts to wrap the jacket even tighter around his torso. He is contemplating how dying would be. He had long come to terms with the idea of death and the peace it brought. A quote he heard a long time ago, really spoke to him, in this moment. Where I am, death is not. A final end to this existence, not a particularly miserable one. However, the words " the ultimate resting place" had quite a calming ring to them.  A good bye, but not like a sad one. A happy good bye of sorts in which you were choosing to let go instead of death springing on you, unsuspecting. Cold, that's what it would be. He whispered to himself, in such a reassuring tone, that surprised even the poor boy. “Where did that come from”, the boy wondered. And tried to get back...