Those Moments

When I was a boy of ten, I woke up one morning strangely keyed up. Why, I didn’t know. It was like the feeling when I went to circus the first time. Jamming arms and legs into the protesting shirt and shorts, I leapt down the bed, and out of the house into the backyard.
It was a lovely summer day, like the ones we had been having, from the past two weeks, ever since I came to my hometown for vacations. Yet the world somehow wore a new face. Sun, birds, flowers seemed to be outdoing themselves. I felt light enough to be taking off and joining the birds. Grandma called to breakfast several times before I heard her. I couldn’t explain the feeling. But it was wonderful.

There was a swing in front of our house, strung to a mango tree on which the first yellow flowers were showing. Soon I was dipping down and soaring high up until I could touch the leaves with bare toes.
This could go on for ever. Grandma was hanging the white sheets on the line. The wind billowed them into sails of a boat skimming the waves of a blue sky.
So passed the day quite set apart from ordinary days. I did nothing exciting. I just swung idled about ,looked ,listened-and felt a tingle.
It all seemed like a dream,when I woke up the next morning. Although the sun shone just as brightly, the spell had vanished.


At rare intervals over the years these mystifying experiences have come. Out of nowhere they drop down like a benediction. Their coming is totally unpredictable. But when they come ,just to be alive is exhilarating.

Not until years later did I have another such experience. It was a summer evening, and my aunt ,my dad and I were walking in to my aunt’s estate about twenty miles from where we lived in Bangalore.
We often visited my aunt’s estate, but suddenly the world seemed to pulse and glow with radiant life. The dust left a golden glow. After spending a while at the estate, we started back past the open fields and pure magic.Hundreds of birds taking rest on the fields ,disturbed by our arrival flew into the sky.Although we had passed this field many times never had I seen such a sight before, and nothing in the world ever equaled the happiness of the moment.

So much pure joy is crammed into these moments, I try to make the most of them.When possible, I forgo my chores and give myself completely to their spell. The result has been storing of inner enrichment that has become a string of pearls to me,each evoking a special memory.

Why these transcendent moments came, or from where, I do not know. Perhaps they sprang like bubbles from the flowing stream of life. I know that as I grew up and acquired more responsibilities the magic moments came less often. I learned fear and frustration discouragement .I began to believe that I had lost my magic moments for ever.
One day it occurred to me that my main trouble was not fear of what might happen today.I was continually plagued by the fear of future. That’s when I discovered to live each day as though life had just began ,I learnt to consider each day as a miniature lifetime,which it really is.A curtain falls on the last act of the old life which was yesterday,and through the alchemy of sleep we are reborn.
As result,my days began to brighten.I had more energy to concentrate on my work.I discovered one vital truth :one good day leads to another.And the best of all those high moments returned.
I knew now for certain that,if I had not realized it before,that, as so many sages have said,the kingdom of heaven is indeed within oneself.