He stood at a crossroads, silently staring at the grey
horizon. The full moon was sinking, growing paler and paler and it would soon disappear
under the light of the morning sun. He knew that this happened every day, but
today it felt different. It was as if the setting moon was a sign of goodbye,
of letting go of yesterday’s worries, of leaving the past behind. One part of
his journey was ending, and another about to begin.
The cool morning air entered his lungs and each breath
seemed to clear his mind. As he looked back in his mind, he could see how the
winding road he had taken, with all its unexpected twists and unpredictable turns
had brought him to this point in time. A long distance back, he could see where
he had started out. He couldn't help but smile at how innocent, how naive he
was back then. So optimistic, his dreams ran wild, unfettered by the chains of
reality. The journey had started out with the highest of hopes, the promise of
treasures and of new experiences driving him forward. There were mountains to
climb and dragons to slay, exotic places to visit and beautiful women to fall
in love with. The journey promised him everything, happiness, fun, peace, love…
But some promises were made, just to be broken. Most of the
promises were a mirage. He would see one on the edge of the horizon, but when
he reached for it, it was never there. Illusions, that’s all they were. Cruel
tricks of the mind, played just to entice the traveller to trudge along on his journey.
And what few treasures were there, they were concealed within the trickiest of
mazes. They required extraordinary efforts to unearth and yet most of them were
so fragile, one wrong move and they broke into shards like glass.
When the journey began, the whole world was his stage. There
was so much to see, so much to do and so much to be experienced. He thought
that all he had to do was wait for the right opportunity, for the right person
and the right place. And wait he did, but what he waited for never came to be.
He started having an inkling of a doubt that maybe the journey wouldn't be all
he dreamed it would be. But he was quick to throw away that thought, and it lay
in some forgotten recess of his mind.
There were fellow travellers along the way, moving in the
same direction, having the same dreams as his. In time he learnt to trust
them, to listen to them and to laugh with them. He loved to listen to their
stories, and sometimes he would make up his own. He would find time to go for a
swim with them on a hot day, and to make a fire for them when the days got
cold. He grew closer to them and the journey was all the easier for their
presence.
The road had its fair share of perils along the way.
Sometimes there were ruffians and rogues, older travellers waiting to pounce on
fledglings like him, taking advantage of his inexperience. They found a strange
sense of pleasure in making him do their bidding, having him run errands and
making him a part of their frivolous jokes. Eventually their tough exteriors
softened and they started treating him as an equal. He had far bigger problems
whenever he had to pass through a city, though. There were guardians, drunk in
the arrogance of their power, overconfident in their false knowledge, who would
allow him to pass only if they deemed him fit. They would pose to him all sorts
of riddles, whether they made sense or not, that he had to answer if he wanted
to enter the city. Sometimes they would even make him demonstrate the skills he
acquired through his travels if he was to be deemed worthy. And once he somehow
managed to get past them, there were be stone tablets and rolls upon rolls of
papyrus that he had to needlessly fill in order to get through. By the time he
got out of the city he would be jaded, but was grateful for getting through and
happy to be travelling again.
Yet, his thoughts kept going back to what he dreamed for the
journey to be. Day by day he began growing frustrated, worried that his road
wouldn't lead him to riches or adventure or love. The harder he tried to push
away those feeling, the harder they got to push away, till they hit him smack
in the face. The road wasn’t lined with roses or paved in marble, it was rocky
and weeds grew along the path where there should have been flowers. He was so
angry, at all the stories he had heard that made him dream, of all the lies
that he had filled his head with. He cursed that no one had the courage to tell
him the hard truth, of how difficult the journey would really be. But he was
too far to turn back now, all he could do was move forward.
With leaden feet and a heavier heart, he trudged along, stumbling
here and straying there. The road itself had become murky, sometimes disappearing
for long stretches and emerging again from a different direction. He didn't
realize that he had been drifting, walking in circles, till he kept ending up
at the same place over and over. And he wasn't the only one, his fellow
travellers were as weary as him, some choosing to hide the truth from themselves,
others willing to end their journey at the nearest town.
The weather also turned a foe sometimes. Some days were
mild, placid to the point of boredom, but there were nights he had to struggle
to stay awake, fighting for survival against a torrential storm. He was so worn
out that he felt numb, as much in mind as in body. Yet he kept moving, one step
at a time. What little pleasures he could find along the road, he would savour.
Any respite from the grind was like an oasis in the middle of a desert, he
would make sure to enjoy it as much as he could. But he couldn't stay there
forever, that was not where he belonged, and on he kept treading the road.
Slowly, and painfully, he had realized that the journey was
as much about riches that lay ahead as the thorns that lined the way. It was as
much about the pleasures that were found along the way as it was about the
arduous climb. The wind-blown meadows, the stony slopes, the luscious
riverbanks, the freezing mountain trails, the shady forests and the scorching
deserts were all equally parts of the journey. He understood that happiness and
sorrow were two sides of the same coin, one couldn't exist without the other. He learnt that true love would always be accompanied
by heartbreak, and that heartache would be followed by love. He began to accept
that the grind of the journey was inseparable from its glory.
And along his road he met people of all ilk. There were storytellers
and showboats, alchemists and artisans, the beautiful and the bold, the
credible and the charlatans, the reserved and the raucous. There were the
hypocrites, beckoning people to action, yet who refrained from action
themselves. There were the drifters, staying aloof from everyone else. There
were the curious, eager to learn and experiment, and there were the carefree,
who left their direction to chance. And rarely, there were the enchanting,
causing his heart to skip a beat when his eyes met theirs. Most of these people, he would cross paths
with once, and would never see again. But there were some that remained. Some
who had to travel the same road as his, and some who wanted to travel the same
road with him. They were the ones he held the closest. Even though he knew that
they couldn't stay in his life forever, that their roads would diverge someday,
he was sure that they would stay in his heart and among his most precious
memories.
He was standing, still doubting the path he was about to
tread, the ties he would have to sever, when the first rays of the sun broke
the veil of night. The sky was painted a shade of purple first, then crimson,
which slowly turned azure. Watching this, he was profoundly aware of how much
he had changed. He was battered, bruised and scarred, tempered by the heat of
the journey, and yet he was wiser and stronger than he was before. The things
that broke him in the past were the very things that gave him strength, if only
for the fact that he emerged from them alive. He knew that whatever the road
had to throw at him he could take, or at least find a way to endure. He was ready
for the road ahead, that he was sure of. And with that thought in mind, he took
the first step of his new journey.
