The Moments that count

We as human beings are always trying to maximize, it’s in our evolutionary genetics. What you try to maximize has a significant impact on your life.

I had heard a lot about Conjuring before I went to see the horror for myself and I wasn't spooked as much as I thought I would be. Being a die-hard fan of the genre I was less than impressed with scare factor, but one thing that stuck from the movie was a scene where a picture of the family together was taken at a beach and the whole family seemed really happy. That moment becomes pivotal for the climax. I wondered how many such moments do we have in our lives that truly stay with us.

When I recount, there aren't that many moments that always come to your head when you think about them. There are a scarce few though, those are still vivid and will probably remain that way for the rest of your life.  There wasn't a particularly striking theme for all of those, some were moments of true happiness and some of true horror, but a good amount were neither and were banal from all known aspects. A lot of them came when I was together with my loved ones. For the banal ones, I have a theory that those were the kind where you suddenly serendipitous-ly became fully aware of the ‘now’ and hence they remained etched in the memory forever.

We are doing everything in our powers to maximize the number of moments in our lives but are we doing enough to maximize the moments that stay. I know, this is a cliche and more like the classic example of a cliche said by probably half of the world’s population. It still does make sense to be repeated because of the applicability.

I will still remember the time when I got my job and I ran to the STD PCO outside my hostel to inform my parents. That indeed was a life changing moment but I will always remember the time when my father and my brother went to the circus in my really early childhood. I still remember the rain, the deluge, the cut short circus routine, the disappointment of not being able to see “maut ka kua” – a drill where they ride a bike on the sides of a sphere; it was cancelled due to the monstrous rain. I still remember a few glimpses of the streets we had to take because we couldn't take the normal route that was rendered un-usable by the rain. I can almost feel the wetness in my buttocks to this day and the numerous seat changes as the roof of the circus was leaking from many places. Not sure what made that moment stick, but it did and it keeps coming back to me and I can’t help but feel a little fondness and nostalgic about it.

If you are truly a saint, your every moment can be memorable but then for rest of us, we have to work it out. I have often thought about taking time off and be able to make these moments. It always ends up being a few days trip to a tourist spot, or a week at home, but not much other than that. It is almost always fairly routine with flashes of memor-ability sometimes.  How hard would it be to think of taking a month off for vacation, with family without family, but without the worry of something clambering and waiting for your attention that you somehow shut out? It seems fairly possible to be able to do that, but I haven’t done that in more than a decade of my job.  That probably is my best shot at making moments that count until a time when I become a saint!

Comments (0)