Milestones
Do you remember anything about the first time you walked? I don’t remember that. My memory fails me with a whole bunch of similar things – the first time I uttered a meaningful word, my first day at school, the first prize I won at school and a numerous other things that would have meant the whole world to me at that time ? I am sure, as I progress towards adolescence and beyond, there would be countless occasions to cherish and many others to be just left as bygones. When I look back now, I realize that many of these probably didn’t merit such a furor of emotions and attachment. Nevertheless, it is exactly these milestones, the highs and lows that has shaped me more than my education or anything else. For the outside world, I am what I am because my cognition and behavior was and is guided by these unseemly or joyous occasions. Internally, I define myself with these milestones more than anything else. I judge myself with these, chastise and pat myself, predisposed by these blips on my life’s radar. Some blips are as large as the ocean, drowning me forever, others are like the tip of a pin – pricking and poking. Then there are the huge helium balloon blips, that lift me off the ground into weightlessness, into the ethereal experience of joy.
How did I choose them, when did I give them form and identity? Or is it that my environment and the people around me gave them to me? Do I share my milestones with others around me? Are there school friends, college friends, family members who share the common experience? Did they recognize the same events as a milestone in their lives? Did they give it the same shape and form? A hundred questions!
I think, I chose my milestones partly driven by the judgment of the outside world and partly because of my fad during that period. So, if being good in sports as well was an emphasis at home and Boris Becker inspired me, then the simple act of playing tennis after school for 3 months became a cherished milestone for me. Why ‘milestone’ and not just another leaf from the pages of memory? Because, those 3 months did give me a part of me which still lives in me and is not yet history. Of course, there are the obvious landmarks of marriage and graduation which are more concrete. Do I share milestones with friends? Except for mere completion of academic courses, on the calendar, I don’t share much common milestones with my friends; which is sad to a certain extent.
Milestones – we may formalize them or we may not even acknowledge them when they happen – no matter what we do, we can neither deny their existence in our lives nor the power they sway over us.
