A Road Read

While I hit the beaten path en masse tracing my steps to home or office from a station or bus stop, an array of people in different shapes, cultures, and attires, scampering or sauntering to their destination with respective agenda on their mind, infallibly sparks a feeling of "sonder" in me. Needless to mention I outstrip a few, get streaked past by a handful, and lose track of most as their ways branch out to different spots in the sprawling labyrinth of endless paths and roads. 

I take pride in strutting past people as the confidence it brews allays my worries over ageing knees and crackling joints; strangely and inexplicably, I feel younger than I really am. But the day I reflected that one of these road-mates might be sharing my destination and could be cognizant of a more efficient route enabling him/ her reaching the end line before me despite a slower pace, I caught one in the elevator fitting my thought squarely and uncannily. The catchy white petal patterns on her navy dress had drawn my attention when sped past her earlier by the park beside our office - a whooping 43-storied glass edifice, International Tower 2.

That was a moment of epiphany - my life is a road, isn't it? I prance, flounder about, stroll, stride, and lollop on tar, grass, puddles, steep steps, and tumbling clines cirmventing impediments at times and flowing through lucidly at others. Strangers, colleagues, family weave in and out. With an unimaginable diversity in capabilities, fortes, shticks, means, and wherewithals each wield, it's humbling to contemplate each one's journey to celebrity or humiliation or simply to the usual. Even that usual could be the individual's zenith - a potential realised. 

The coda of this intriguing road saga succinctly put - accept your pace, it's not a race. No matter how many we overtake and how many times we are overtaken, we all will finally be there where we are headed for!

Dona, Sydney, Feb-25