collide

"Maybe we're not supposed to be happy. Maybe gratitude has nothing to do with joy. Maybe being grateful means recognising what you have for what it is. Appreciating small victories. Admiring the struggle it takes simply to be human. Maybe we're thankful for the familiar things we know. And maybe we're thankful for the things we'll never know. At the end of the day, the fact that we have the courage to still be standing is reason enough to celebrate."

- Meredith Grey, "Grey's Anatomy"


Sometimes, courage can be found deep in the heart of the jungle where beasts lurk behind every tree, or on the front lines of a desert battleground where danger outnumbers you like the grains of sand. And a friend of mine told me that the truest courage could be found when crossing the lines of a playground basketball court. There, boundaries represented milestones, scraped knees were the truest battle scars, and growing up was the ultimate line to be crossed. He called that the evening kingdom; a concrete slab with worn lines. Perhaps, there was subtlety to that analogy. I am clueless, really.

After:
And I thought I discovered courage when the hour hand landed on twelve yesterday. A tip-toeing sound surprisingly became audible to my ears. In a corner, I grabbed the cellphone as tight as I could - and without even hearing whose voice was on the end of the spectrum, every beat of the heart thumped my chest. "Hello." And with the voice I heard ring in my ear, what seemed to me only seconds earlier; a demise - I should have known.

Till natural geography viciously pulls me apart...and a crumb of my life ebbing away - I desire not.

Before:
As I sauntered alone around the store, I stood in question for the longest time. "To buy or not to buy?" As the distant nagging thoughts played silently in the wind of this unforgiving weather, the misery spelled cowardice in my face. And with that decision made, what was long ago buried in the horizon on my heart and just the same decision that claimed its destiny; a wrong one - I should have realised.

Till a hole in conscience soaks me into a cold fog and for infinitely autonomous time - I shiver with fear.

Now, I wonder - if there was a good enough reason for us to celebrate the courage to still be standing, what about cowardice?