Move Ahead And Move Along. That’s Life | Sabina Karki
I still remember 12th Baisakh 2072. I was outside the bathroom with a new pair of clothes and a towel, waiting for my mother to come out so I could take a quick shower.
I knocked on the door twice but nobody answered. I knocked the third time then the door opened wide empty. Astonished to see my mother vanish out of there, I started blabbering at her absence for tricking me to wait outside for so long.
As I stepped a foot inside the bathroom door, the entire floor started shaking. Clenching both my hands at the doorknob to hold myself up, I shouted ‘Earthquake’.
It was a real earthquake and it was a big one.
I got so scared that I rushed down the stairs the moment I felt like it stopped. Reaching an empty ground in 10 seconds from my 2nd flat room was unthinkable. It felt like a short marathon race but on bare-foots.
‘Why are you holding your slippers on hand?’ my mother standing 100 meters away from me shouted at me, ‘Don’t stay there. The building might collapse. Come over here.’
I walked hurriedly towards her and to a safe place.
The ground was still shaking and the dogs were still barking. Everyone from our locality had gathered there. Hopefully, the people I knew there was safe and sound.
For a moment it felt like I was dying. I couldn’t remember how everything happened so quickly. I forgot that I going for a bath. I forgot that I was a human being and I have problems in life. I was completely in the present moment.
In fear I forgot what crisis in life means, what being lonely feels like, and the reason why I used to become sad time and again.
All I remembered was it’s now or never. So I just ran for my life.
As the ground was calm, I put down my slippers, wore them, and went to take essentials from my room.
That evening, fear of aftershocks of earthquake forced everyone to spend the night in the empty space near our house. Everyone from my family including my landlord slept on the same ground. I was surprised to see the so-called rich family settling their tents besides ours.
At that moment, what I realized was ‘nothing is more precious than life itself.’
After weeks of aftershocks and frequent earthquakes, time had slowly started to heal everything. Life was getting back to normal. The landlord started asking for the rent. That rich family started boasting about their wealth.
I was back to my regular life routine.
Things were getting better. Everything was being normal. My problems were back again. I had started panicking about how my society will judge me if I come home late. Life’s crisis was entering inside me. Loneliness and fear of getting abandoned by people were a step closer.
A few months later, I decided to join a school as a full-time teacher. Teaching students what I never applied in my life was a new irony of my life. But life happened and everything came back to normal.
I understood that life is beautiful but not always easy. We need to realize that this is how life is and we have to accept what life has for us.
But then, something bigger than my personal problem hit the country again in 2077. The covid-19 pandemic. Everything was shut down. The schools, offices, banks, and everything. The crisis was back again. The only difference was, this time, we had to stay inside no matter what. It was exactly the opposite of that of 2072.
People were dying out of this virus, the news was outraging the pain and suffering. I was so traumatized due to the pandemic crisis that I forgot about my ongoing life’s problems again.
I who was teaching in-person started teaching online. The online world became the new world to me and too many. Now, I was only focused on how to live in the present moment because I didn’t know what tomorrow beholds. Keeping the slippers and my pains outside the door, I was focused on making every moment count.
A smooth life changed drastically. Hearing relatives getting Covid-19 infection was painful but not getting a chance to help anyone or meet anyone made it even worse.
Slowly it seems like the crisis is minimizing its impact. It feels like we will soon return to normal life. That’s just a positive hope because we can’t do anything more than hope right now.
Even this time life taught me another lesson, ‘to live the moment because we don’t know what will happen next.’
This made me think about life from a different perspective.
From the slippers’ perspective. Yes, the slipper that I was holding in my hands during the earthquake. And the slippers I kept outside the door during the pandemic crisis.
Actually, we don’t know who’s going to wear the slippers next. We don’t know if it will rain and gets wet, or it will get dry on a hot summer day. We don’t know if it will break or it will last for years. We only know that the purpose of those pair of the slipper is to move- to move ahead, and to move along with the one who wears it.
And, that’s exactly what the purpose of life reflects. To move ahead and to move along with the time and situation that comes along.
We have to appreciate both the pain and the happiness. We must value life to be grateful for all we have, for everything and everyone in our life.
It’s as beautiful as the roses but remember, a rose has its thrones. Therefore, we too need to bear the pain and suffering of thorns of life to bloom like the rose someday.
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