A Mug of Responsibility

As I went about the sink to wash my plate after dinner, in front of me, stood my milk mug- waiting to be washed. I had been keeping that mug for washing every day for the last 5 years. But today, some force took hold of me, and I took the mug instinctively and washed it in an instant. These are the final days of my home stay, and in a couple of days I would leave home for higher education. The first lesson to be an adult is to be responsible for ones own actions.

An Incomplete Intact C(h)ord

As we sat on the dinner table laughing ourselves to the jokes told by my dad, in the midst of all the jokes and witty comebacks, he hit an emotional chord in me, he said, “When I see you (me) and your ways, I see a past of me lingering with me, and what you see in me, is future standing in front of you”. What he said made me think about both of us, our ways, habits, peculiarities, etc. as everybody knows, we are nothing but a reflection of our parents, at the same time we see in our parents our future selves. As it goes in everybody’s’ family, me and my dad disagree on many things, and have polar opposite views on preferences of food, habits, we are similar in many ways than I can imagine.

My dad is an accomplished teacher, professor, scientist; he too has his shortcomings, while on the other hand I too have my own set of weaknesses. These shortcomings of both of us are the same, rather I should say similar. My dad being a professor has overcome his shortcomings in time, but on the other hand I’m still haunted by my demons. My demons are my shyness, my inability to explain myself properly and clearly to others, and my hyper negative habit of criticizing myself too often. As the whole story goes my dad too accepted these problems when he was a guy like me, and won over these problems overtime, but it signifies and vindicates one important thing- we are our reflection of our parents and things we inherit from them not just good traits, but their demons as well. The same way with my mom, I have successfully inherited her ability to be a writer (she is a freelance writer and professor), at the same time I too have inherited her demon- her I-completely-trust-you attitude which is a setback in this 21^st century.

A sweet childhood photograph of me and my dad which I hold close to my heart, a past and future reflection indeed!

Another thing I noticed along this way is that we always live in our past or our future, the reason behind this is quite clear now, we never really come face-to-face with our present self, we either are told by our parents that we are their past reflection or we are told that they are the reflection of our future. Against all this cliché, this goes, we are meant to live the present as it is a gift presented to us, but on the contrary we find ourselves thinking about the past or the future. We are either regretting or worrying despite. What we see in our parents and what they see in us(youngsters), is just the universe’s way of telling us that we are incomplete in our own ways, and mending ourselves is a difficult task all-in-all. Being incomplete is how this universe is telling us to live our life presently. In short this universe is a visionary, he is giving us a chance to exorcise our demons, and be a fuller versions of our better self, which lies somewhere in the middle awaiting to be discovered.