Once upon a time…
Once upon a time, there lived a girl with no past and no future but a great present. She lived and she loved every moment and relished every hour and every minute of her present day. She liked to smell shampoos and she loved to keep the windows of the cab down every time it went through that road in Tejgaon that smelled of cookies. And she loved the little kid who sold chocolates for one taka in Bijoy Shoroni, not because he liked her back, but because he called her “apa” with such affection as if she were his real apa.
She never had to bother about her life beyond her fabulous present. Her life was a never ending today, day in and day out. Every morning it was the same beginning and every night it was the same ending. But she never got bored because it never got less than fabulous.
She noticed people around her. She noticed the way they carried their aching past and the way they lumbered toward their uncertain future. The gloom of yesterday and the anxious anticipation of tomorrow weighed down on them and prevented them from seeing the beautiful and the fabulous that makes today. Her heart aches to see how foolish these people are and she wished they would stop living either in their past or their future so that they could live this fabulous present.
As she walked down the street, she saw so many people with so many reasons to be sad about. And as she looked around those same people, she found even more reasons for them to be happy about. She wished she could point them out to these people. But she knew she couldn’t. Because they are different. Unlike her, they lived three lives at the same time, one in the past, one in the present and one in the future.
When someone carries too many eggs in one basket, one egg is bound to break. Similarly when someone burdens one’s soul with three lives, one life is bound to break. And unfortunately for many, it is always the present one. But little do they realize the importance of the present. Little do they realize that the present is what makes the past as well as the future. And when you really think about it, there is no separate past or future. But there is only the present.
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