Of Dreams and Reality....

(Written in 2002, found when I was packing my diaries to go back to India..)

She was running blind, searching perhaps-
Happy and carefree - just she and her dreams.
And then it happened, now she asks herself - how?
She had been young and naive,
Flattered perhaps at the attention she never got.

She knew the hurdles were too many,
Yet she ran - on and on.
Fretted night and day about things to come,
But not once did she consider giving up the race.
Content and fulfilled deep within, still she knew,
The catch was not worth the chase.
And the treasure not worth the trouble.

She realized she was asking for it,
But she could not give it up,
Perhaps it was her reserve of joy,
In an otherwise empty life.
The mind knows but the heart seldom pays heed,
After all the mind worries too much,
Are hope and trust not the delight of life?

Knowing she was after something that never was,
That if she ever got close enough,
There would be nothing but her own disappointment.
But even in her frustration, it was better that way
The thrill, the excitement was in the chase,
The anxiety, romance and drama too,
The real destination was nothing to her.
She smiled sadly at the saying,
The moon a pretty sight from the Earth,
Up close just sand, rock and stone.

She hoped that it would just disappear,
So she could not go on even if she wanted to,
And then live in peace with herself and others.
And finally it happened – pop it went,
Suddenly it was no longer there.
She was free – she had broken her chains.
She had to be happy, she knew it.
Yet it did not feel so, she wondered why?

All the fiction of a colorful mind,
How true – one sees what one wishes to.
She made a diamond of a piece of glass
And chased her own illusions.
As she saw it shattered in front of her,
A single tear trickled from her eyelids,
For her diamond that had never been,
A second tear rolled down her cheek,
And sealed her buried dreams, new ones to seek…

Sophie. (2002)