Contemplate

(This is my try at perspective writing. I have written this narrative not in my own words but in that of an old man who finds himself contemplating over the journey of life)

I see a page torn from a newspaper I owned some decades ago. It’s preserved between the pages of a hard bound book. The page has turned yellow with age. I run my trembling fingers along my face and feel my own skin marred by the same agent of time. This is the way things go I suppose. I remember being a young boy full of energy. I recount scabbed knees and other bruises I earned on the playground that I wore with the same pride as if they were medals of honour. Those cold winter nights that I watched melt into summer days were a true act of magic. Back then I possessed a vivid imagination and it would breathe life into the most dullest and mundane occurrences in life.

Then came the next phase – youth. Things seem to complicate themselves unnecessarily and whirlpool of emotions didn’t make it any easier. I remember having to make several supposedly life changing decisions and only carrying on ahead in life to realise that those weren’t the decisions I had to be careful about. It was the others that had to be made on a whim, the decisions that didn’t come with paperwork and formalities. Those are the ones that still haunt me today. The decision to down another peg in spite of knowing I was already too drunk was one amongst my regrets. I burnt several bridges at the time and built many afresh.

My choices right or wrong led me to the self-same path of adulthood. I came face to face with the real world only to realise just how naïve I had been up till then. And then it happened, I started to relive the phases I had already passed, through my son. But it seemed to go by a lot quicker and eventually an air of melancholy set in when time dragged along distance into our relationship. His hand that was once small enough to fit in mine completely was now just as large as mine and that same hand that would reach out to me so often now pushes buttons on a phone to contact me in an attempt to bridge the distance of 1000 miles that lie between us.

The years roll on and things change some more. My limbs become stiffer, fatigue is a frequent visitor and my hair is coloured a distasteful white. But it feels as though my hair isn’t the only thing that has lost colour in my life. These days the news mourns the death of personalities I knew well as a child. And I sit here contemplating the life I made, words left said or unsaid, opportunities utilized or wasted and I ask myself what it’s all worth. Lying six feet under the dirt would render my social status irrelevant, my shoes would lose their shine and my crisp black suit would become a befitting shroud. All I hope to have earned in this lifetime was some love and respect. Maybe then I’ll be granted immortality in someone’s memory. Just like the page of the newspaper that turned yellow with age. Perhaps it’ll be discarded someday but I’ll still remember what the headline read.