When you look back, you remember the moments you felt deeply. Not those moments when you were at an extreme end of a mood swing, but when your emotions held gravity because you recognized something in your life worth noticing. These moments may be felt consciously, like the time when I saw all my family members dancing to weird Bollywood songs I don't even remember and thought that I would miss this when eventually I packed my bags to a college I hadn't decided yet. When I hugged my brother close on his 22nd birthday, hoping that the smell of his hair might soften the reconciliation I'd have to give myself when I left town the next day. It is at these moments that we feel the urge to hold these precious moments close because we're scared of letting them go, filled with fear of losing this wholeheartedness.
It is at these moments that I fully experience what Brene Brown meant when she said that joy is the most vulnerable of all emotions. We're scared to feel it, but it is important to feel these moments even when simultaneously we're afraid of losing them. It may create a dichotomy but these moments fill our soul and give us strength to carry on, to make compromises with the mundanity of daily life in the hope of feeling them again.
Ideally, we choose our paths in the hope that we will have more of these moments. If we are right or not, based on the nature and relationship with the path we have chosen, only time tells. And time does tell, only if you let it. These wholehearted moments are not planned, often happen at once when the time is right, when you're ready to let go and those around you whom you trust are participating in the joy of the moment. Not in any anticipation, but celebrating being together, even if the celebration has not been declared.
When I feel this wholeheartedness, I find it easier to reconnect to more subtler moments of feeling the same emotion to which I had lost track in my daily life.
Sitting at the back of my family's small navy hatchback, when life was full of homework and school lessons, driving through the cantonment area reserved for army, listening to my father reminisce about the songs from his generation. Hugging my mother close and feeling myself melting into the comfort of her arms. Driving around with my brothers in my budding teenage years, with the taste of freedom fresh on the tip of my tongue. Being lucky enough to be dropped off at my best friend's house in middle school as we planned our play of the day, plotting a new game with her cousins, full of innocent joy. Waking up to see the backyard submerged with heavy rain pattering the roof, signaling that we would be lucky enough to get a rainy day off from school. There were some days when me and my brother even prayed for it. As you might have noticed, these memories don't follow a timeline.
I get filled with emotion every time I feel these memories retracing their path in my mind and tears brim in my eyes. Yet, I no longer push them away and allow myself to feel these emotions, letting them fill me with life.
There is a magic that comes alive when the right people are together, at the right time, when life feels just right and you no longer feel the need to escape to a better situation.
May you have many more of these moments, to fill your wonderful life.
P.S. This article was written on the eve of my brother's 22nd birthday. May all your dreams come true Bhaiya