What happens if your greatest strength:- ‘ability to dream, ability to aim higher always’ becomes your biggest weakness?

What if your greatest strength becomes a very huge part of why you’re never content?

What if your greatest strength becomes a very huge part of why you’re never in the moment?

The ability to dream also comes with the baggage.

The baggage of YEARNING.

Yearning for validation in school.

Yearning for the biggest exam of life which will decide your career.

Yearning for a rank after you enter college.

Yearning for the city you want to settle in.

Yearning for the love which seems very distant always because of your dreams.

Yearning for the happiness which seems just one result away, which actually never comes.

Yearning for a partner and yet being a self sabotage master.

Yearning for a comforting and meaningful friendship.

Yearning for everything and anything always, while forgetting that in the middle of all of this, your life is happening. Life doesn’t stop.

There are wanderers, there are collectors, there are explorers and then, there are YEARNERS.

We, the yearners live most of our lives in anticipation.

We postpone joy, celebrations, rest.

Yearners live life like a rehearsal for a future they haven’t lived yet.

We spend more of our life wanting, rather than having.

Not because life is unkind, but we are unkind to ourselves in some ways.

Every time we achieve something that we have had our eyes on for so long, by the time we reach there our eyes have already found the next horizon to achieve.

When we give ourselves a deadline, “I will finally be happy WHEN” but our ‘when’ quietly changes without we realise it.

And after all the years of living, I have realised that the point of life was never to stop yearning. Maybe it’s to stop scheduling the moment we will finally arrive at.

Because the horizon was never lying to us. It’s supposed to move.

The dream was not the problem. The high ambition was never the problem. The problem was the deadline we gave ourselves. The problem was we tied our happiness to the deadline.

We cannot deprive ourselves of permission to live life, while waiting for a rank, a validation, a gold medal or a “right” person.

So maybe the only cure for a yearner is, to notice, that life is happening, here and now in such small imperfect moments.

Let the dreams stay, let the high ambitions stay. But don’t treat them as some debt you owe to your life or as some debt that life owes you.

Until the next horizon 🤍

~Haiya

Thanks for reading <3

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We spend so much time searching for love in romantic relationships, in situationships and in fleeting connections that promise permanence but rarely deliver it.

We talk endlessly about finding “the one” as though love exists only in that form, yet some of the deepest love I have ever known has come from people who owed me nothing except their presence in my life.

It came from my nani who remembered my favorite meal. It came from family members who loved me before I had achieved anything and who would continue loving me even if I achieved nothing at all.

This kind of love cannot be measured, negotiated, or earned. It exists quietly in the background, so constant that we often overlook it while chasing louder, more dramatic versions of affection. Perhaps that is why we fail to recognize it.

We are searching for fireworks while sitting beside a steady flame. The older I grow, the more I realise that love is not always waiting at the end of a perfect romance.

Sometimes, it is already there in a wrinkled hand dusted with flour, rolling puranpolis and making sambharo 🥹 and in the simple and profound act of someone caring for you long after they have every reason to rest.

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It had been raining since morning in Mumbai.

H(she) had returned home from the hospital that evening. J(he) had made it home early that day.

After a long day, H had freshened up and joined J in the balcony, where he sat quietly with two cups of coffee, watching the monsoon wash over the Worli Sea Link.  The cool breeze carried the scent of petrichor and the rich aroma of J’s special coffee.

J:- Here’s your coffee.

H:- Thank You J. (takes a sip from the coffee). Hmmm what a perfect combination; J’s special coffee, Mumbai rain, and this view. Enough to make the chaos of the day momentarily distant.

J:- I know right, Mumbai in monsoon is the best.

H:- Yes. Hey, did you pay the electricity bill? I am so sorry I forgot to remind you

J:- Yes I did. By the way, did you call mom? she called while you were in the OT.

H:- Oh god, I forgot, thank you for reminding. You know, it was a very long but interesting surgery, a very technically demanding aneurysm and at one point the surgical field was filled with a lot of blood and for a split second we thought that the aneurysm had ruptured. Thankfully, it was just a ruptured cortical vein. And the post-operative period was equally stressful because of the various co-morbidities in the patient and the need for close monitoring. And amidst all of this, I literally forgot to check my phone.

J:- Damn, so it was a long day for you. By the way, I just had to attend OPD today. No surgery was scheduled for today.

H:- Hmmm…

J:- What are you thinking? I know that face of yours. Tell me

H:- There’s one more “what if” question going on in my mind

J:- Go on, I am all ears

H:- What if (takes a pause), What if I die first? Will you fall in love again?

J:- Tough question.

H:- Be very honest haan, please

J:- Yes! okay, do you remember when we got our residency in different states, I clearly remember you telling me this and I quote “Stop being so sentimental okay. We love each other J, but we should be able to stay apart too. That’s what real love is, knowing that both of us are busy chasing dreams and ambitions, yet we choose to love each other everyday despite the distance. Love is a part of our life not our whole life” and you were so on point.

And definitely it will take a lot of time for me to be happy again, to be normal again.

(He takes a big pause, holds her hands, looks into her eyes)

But I will miss you H. I miss my evening coffee conversations with you, I will miss seeing your eyes sparkle when you talk about an interesting surgery case. Also, I don’t have the measure of making one cup of coffee, I will always have to make yours too to get the coffee sugar proportion right.

I will miss the pep talks you give me on the days when I want to give up. I will miss your sudden late night cravings for which we drive 10 kms at midnight.

I will miss being your passenger prince while you give gaalis to anyone and everyone while driving.

(Both of them laugh)

And tell me with whom will I dissect each character arc after watching a series?

Also, how can I forget this, I will miss your PJs

H:- OH they are not PJs okay? But, you didn’t answer my question, will you fall in love again?

J:- No, definitely no. I will not fall in love again, I guess.What we have is so rare. Also, I think it will be unfair to any other woman because I will always try to find YOU in them. That’s not at all fair. Every woman deserves to be loved for the way they are and I won’t do this to any woman just to fill a void you have left in me.

H:- (she looks at J with teary eyes) Oh universe, how did I get so lucky? The man you are! I love you.

J:- I love you more.

The rain continues outside as they sit together in comfortable silence, sipping coffee.

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