PUNCTUATE YOUR LIFE!

A significant part of my life in this city has been spent traveling to office and back in autos, buses and trains, much as it is with all of us. Getting into and out of them leaves you with little or no time to notice what’s happening around you, what with you having to negotiate your way through people, traffic, hawkers, animals, ditches and then some more.

As luck would have it, life took a turn for the better and I was bestowed with a vehicle and a chauffer to drive me to office and back home, which took some time getting used to, I must admit.

One bright sunny morning I got into the back seat of my car as usual, rolled down the window panes, allowed myself to relax while feeling the cool breeze gently caress my clean shaven jaw line ( Not that I had a sculptured one at that), and chose to look out of the window rather than indulge in the usual flipping through of my morning newspaper. What I saw out of the window of my car that day brought with it a realization that never ever occurred to me before. I SAW HILLS. Yes I saw hills beyond the sky scraped concrete jungle that so uncomfortably enveloped my life up until then. Hills? So what? Haven’t you ever seen them before? What’s so unique about them hills?

Well the difference is, I had never noticed those hills before. In all my years of traveling to and from office, all I ever noticed was trucks, cars, buses, peoples faces, buildings, malls, green, orange and red lights. But that day I took some time off and looked up and around, the green sheet of cover across their huge beings, topped with misty cloud covers made them look so majestic and powerful. I was unaware of their presence around the city I live in, that moment I was overwhelmed by the fact that they were there all along waiting for me to take notice of them and acknowledge their existence; and here I was cruelly ignoring their towering presence around me. I smiled to myself and thanked god for teaching me my lesson in punctuation. Today I make it a point to slow down, take some time off and look at them hills everyday as if to say thank you for being there, and seeming like a protective shield and making me realize that there is more to life than just our immediate surroundings.

All of us have at some point of time realized the presence of something in our lives, which existed all along but didn’t get our attention because of the pace with which we go about our daily chores. Punctuating; our lives just like this sentence, allows us to slow down and take note of what’s happening around us. Try it, slow down, after parking your car walk back home a little slower than you usually do, you might notice something new. Take the stairs up to your floor instead of the lift you might meet new people and may even strike up a lifelong friendship. Look around, stop a little and the beauty of creation and people around us will enrich our lives even further.
-Fabian Cowan