Boats

You must have wondered so many times whether the way you live, who you grow up to be and what you desire is influenced by your basic values or by every experience from your surroundings.

I often have this vision of the memories from my childhood where my maternal grandmother used to share a lot of stories from Mythology, from her own childhood and college and her learnings from the life she had lived as contributed by her experiences.

And she used to do so with such an unbiased perception that I could discuss and form my own opinions about everything I heard. And I guess a lot of it had an impact on the values I formed with my personality.

So when I started interacting with kids my age in school, I met all kinds of them and used to wonder what their stories were.

A few who were ready to understand one another, some who would be bullies to everyone they met, yet others who would be timid and a few who wouldn't know how to proceed. In all of them, there lived different stories of how they had imbibed within themselves what they saw. Yet, they were all together, like little boats in a lake waiting to find their identities and start drifting towards them to find their place in the ocean of lives, with the waves of influences or fighting their way opposite to them.

Perhaps, they were all a part of this race or they just flowed along with the current. And may be, they did find their places eventually. I would never know.

All I know is that somewhere all those kids grew up, remaining scattered like little boats in the same lake, unique, yet engrossed in themselves to find who they were and they tried their best to learn how to reach their respective shores and may be reached there at last.

At least the nostalgic child in me would like to believe that.