Coping With Life

Last day while talking to a friend, amidst trivial talks, she made a comment, "I envy you. You just walk into a restaurant in a strange city and order a coffee and sit and enjoy it all alone. I have never done anything like that. I'm terrified of it. Even the thought of walking into a strange hotel by myself scares me."

When someone puts it that way, yes, its exciting. For most of you this might seem like a stupid thing to be jealous of. Everyone does that, don't they? Well I didn't until last year. Even I was terrified of going alone into a restaurant and sitting down without fretting about what people might be thinking of me or of doing something stupid. Being alone isn't easy. Not for many of us. Being alone and totally comfortable with it. Enjoying your own company. Not worrying about people thinking you are a loser with no friends. Or just of going alone into an unknown place. All that is out of bounds for people like me. Or it was.

Being alone in a strange city miles away from home with no one to call a good friend, company becomes a luxury. And you learn to go on. You learn to cope with the unknown. You learn to enjoy your own company or the company of the stranger sitting right across you and occasionally lifting his head up from the newspaper to smile at you. You learn to sit back and watch life as it rolls by. You learn that how much ever people pretend to care, they don't care as much about your life as you. If you want something, you have to do it by yourself. Life has this amazing quality. It makes you take the hit and then teaches you to stand up and fight back. You never know how far you can go until you push your limits further and further. I took the hit and I learned to stand up. And so can anyone. Its always tough, the first step. It took me 2 days of contemplation, a leap of faith and extreme hunger to go all alone to the restaurant just across my apartment. But after you make that first step, it gets easier and easier.

At some point in our life, we are bound to face situations which we never expected. Never think you cannot do it. Remember you never know what you are capable of until you push yourself. Having dealt with loneliness, hunger, depression and fear, I have learnt to appreciate those little things in life. Now when I have food in front of me, I thank God for it. When I have friends who stay on the line for hours at a stretch trying to cheer me, I thank God for the good company I have. When one of my student brings me his sketch book and shows everything that he has drawn, I thank God for the smile on my face. I have come out of everything learning some valuable lessons on appreciating all the small and big things that I have. No one said life is easy. But there is light at the end of the tunnel, ALWAYS. And its definitely worth struggling for. :)