Bridge Over Troubled Waters
I have lost count of the number of times I listened to this song today. I zeroed in on it after casting about the wilderness of Youtube looking for something that would quieten my own troubled spirit. Here is a link to this song, if you have not heard it before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_a46WJ1viA
I have been at it nearly all day as I mechanically plodded on, grading one wrong answer after another from a mid term exam I held recently. The woes of grading those answers appear insignificant in comparison to the other turbulence in my heart.
It has been my day of troubled waters. Of pain that seems to torch through my very marrows and turn them into hopeless cinders. A day on which the realisation of my foolishness hit me in full force as I rubbed open my sleepy eyes in the morning. My incompetence as an investor in Life stood exposed plainly all of a sudden. The sadness of non-attainment engulfed me in one suffocating pall.
I am not new to foolishness, remorse or pain in any combination. But never have I drowned those moments of misery in escapisms like inebriation, although I have been a reckless tippler for brief periods in my life.
I have struggled all alone always, ploughing through the treacherous quicksands of each episode of such misery in the past.
This time around how I wish I could talk to someone about it. But how does that help? Conversations in such moments are much like a fix. They give you a transient reprieve. And then the misery back comes back. With renewed vigour, like a rebelling torrent that has been struggling to break free from an unwelcome dam on its fierce path.
Strangely, for the religious man that I consider myself to be, even Prayer does not seem to help. It is perhaps because of the childish remorse that the Lord did not want you to go down that path to start with. But then you are supposed to go back to Him whenever you need Him. Like a child in pain running back to its mother.
Like I have done many times in the past. Only to realise that this Mother chooses when to offer succour. Often it is on Her terms.
I know this too shall pass. As those few others in the past. But would some bit of me have died with it? What would that bit be? Would it be the cankerous elements that I should have exorcised long back? I hope so.
Right now all that I can think of is that morning when I will hopefully wake up, free from the dull ache that I cannot seem to put behind. Or hope that the Bridge Over Troubled Waters will be more than just a song. And that someone will lie himself or herself down to help me walk across the swirling waters that seem to want to swallow me.
Too pained to offer my customary closing salutations...
I have lost count of the number of times I listened to this song today. I zeroed in on it after casting about the wilderness of Youtube looking for something that would quieten my own troubled spirit. Here is a link to this song, if you have not heard it before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_a46WJ1viA
I have been at it nearly all day as I mechanically plodded on, grading one wrong answer after another from a mid term exam I held recently. The woes of grading those answers appear insignificant in comparison to the other turbulence in my heart.
It has been my day of troubled waters. Of pain that seems to torch through my very marrows and turn them into hopeless cinders. A day on which the realisation of my foolishness hit me in full force as I rubbed open my sleepy eyes in the morning. My incompetence as an investor in Life stood exposed plainly all of a sudden. The sadness of non-attainment engulfed me in one suffocating pall.
I am not new to foolishness, remorse or pain in any combination. But never have I drowned those moments of misery in escapisms like inebriation, although I have been a reckless tippler for brief periods in my life.
I have struggled all alone always, ploughing through the treacherous quicksands of each episode of such misery in the past.
This time around how I wish I could talk to someone about it. But how does that help? Conversations in such moments are much like a fix. They give you a transient reprieve. And then the misery back comes back. With renewed vigour, like a rebelling torrent that has been struggling to break free from an unwelcome dam on its fierce path.
Strangely, for the religious man that I consider myself to be, even Prayer does not seem to help. It is perhaps because of the childish remorse that the Lord did not want you to go down that path to start with. But then you are supposed to go back to Him whenever you need Him. Like a child in pain running back to its mother.
Like I have done many times in the past. Only to realise that this Mother chooses when to offer succour. Often it is on Her terms.
I know this too shall pass. As those few others in the past. But would some bit of me have died with it? What would that bit be? Would it be the cankerous elements that I should have exorcised long back? I hope so.
Right now all that I can think of is that morning when I will hopefully wake up, free from the dull ache that I cannot seem to put behind. Or hope that the Bridge Over Troubled Waters will be more than just a song. And that someone will lie himself or herself down to help me walk across the swirling waters that seem to want to swallow me.
Too pained to offer my customary closing salutations...
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