Let your story unfold!

I had a blessed childhood where I was lucky enough to visit my grandparent’s house during holidays and spend time with them. Being pampered was a major part of that blessing!

My grandmother would prepare my favourite recipes everyday. Baba, as we lovingly called our grandfather, would take me and my brother to the fields where we would learn to pick ripe peas or chana, and play along the river side. We rode on the tractor with my uncle, climbed up trees and flew kites all day long until we heard our mother calling out for us in the evening.

At that tender age, for me, the highlight of every day was the post dinner stories that my grandmother would tell us at night! From popular mythology to local folk tales, and magical fairies to spooky spirits, Grandma knew them all, by heart. I would hang on to every word in her stories, filled with wonder and awe, and waiting for the story to unfold.

In every one of those stories, certain events would take place that would shake up the hero’s life and compel her to go on a journey, even when the hero is reluctant to leave her safe space. And what an extraordinary journey it would be! The hero would feel sad and unhappy, hurt by the circumstances, misinterpret situations and even cause pain to others. Along her way, she would make friends, kill her enemies and discover her own truth. In the end, the hero inevitably would have found herself. Maybe not the same self when she had started out, but her own self, nevertheless!

In each of these stories, we did not know what was going to happen next. As kids, we marvelled at not knowing why the events took place or how they would turn out? We were just hooked at every step of the story imagining ourselves fighting the demons and saving the kingdom!

How come in life, as adults, we don’t feel the same way anymore? Isn’t life just like the stories too? Does it not throw unknown circumstances at us and compel us to leave our safe space? Aren’t we the protagonist of our life story? Don’t we make mistakes, commit errors and fall into pits only to get out with the help of a friend?

How come then, do we want to be certain of our future when we never know how this story will turn out? Aren’t we curious, just a little bit, to wait and watch how this life-story unfolds without knowing what might happen in the end?

After all, the point of the story is not to reach the end, but to narrate, listen, play out and enjoy the unhurried, unfolding of the story itself.