I Dream of Yesterday!

 A long time ago, during an ambiguous time in my life, words from a spiritual leader carved in my heart; “Don’t let a moment pass without a dream in your heart,” he said. I have lived by that statement since. Dreaming is easier when you are young, but those dreams take a different focus as you age. Goals are the strength of your focus and achievements. It gives hope for a better tomorrow. As a child, I dreamed of being a physician, an actress, and a writer. My dreams and focus became my children as an adult. To live for them to help them achieve their own goals. My children are grown and building their own lives, and I find joy in their achievements.

I have achieved more than I ever imagined in my lifetime. I find myself at a junction struggling to find a purpose in life. I am at a loss, without a dream in my heart. I have no desire or longing for anything. My heart is heavy, feeling melancholy. Past events and memories of my childhood keep sneaking into my thoughts, and I recognize things differently now. I find myself mourning for my parents, and my feelings are so real and raw. I think of the times sitting on my Father’s lap and listening to the stories of his adventures. They are more realistic now and regrets the time I’ve lost with him. My Father had fought world war II for the British government, and I can barely remember his stories about it, except the one he was trapped in an underground bunker. The secret entrance was blocked by a bomb blast. He survived three weeks in a trapped bunker with minimal food and water until he was rescued. He was awarded a medal that he never collected from the British Government in England. He was a great man who had done unimaginable things like astral travel and treating people with hypnosis. He floated in the ocean from Sri Lanka to India in three days without danger until he was rescued by a fisherman in India. He was put in jail for the suspicion of being espionage for the unexplained travel from SL to India. My Father’s many adventures were unbelievable to the ordinary public. As a young child, I listened to his stories as fairytales. He has been gone for more than 20 years, and suddenly his memories bring tears to my eyes, and I am in awe of his character and feeling a sense of pride. However, his talent and achievements play no significance today. This is precisely my point I am struggling with. 

Today, at this junction, his life plays before me because I’ve been thinking about the cycle of life. Our purpose in living this life, questioning why we achieve things, build things, raise children, and in the end, we leave all things behind only to be forgotten and lost to the new world. Reality sinks in deep, realizing how my parents felt when we moved out, leaving them to get old alone and doing our duty but in the distance. Father’s wrote to me in his last days, “I am living with borrowed time until I see you again.” And as such, he passed within a month of seeing me.  

When I think of my mother, her life was sad. She was born to a rich father who passed away when she was very young. She suffered throughout her young adult and married life until her last breath. The love she had for us and the sacrifices she made to give us a better life. She was the best mother any child could ever have. My son had the luxury of knowing her, but my daughter never got to experience her love. My grandkids will never learn about their great grandparents, just like I never got to see my own great grandparents. This is the way of life, and we have to live by life rules. The cycle of life continues throughout the centuries. When you stop and think about it, you question why? What is the purpose of our existence here on earth? I know there are answers to that in Buddhist philosophy, “the actions of a person lead to a new existence after death, in an endless cycle called samsara. This cycle is considered to be dukkha, unsatisfactory, and painful. The cycle stops only if liberation is achieved by insight and the extinguishing of desire.” Rebirth – Buddhism – Wikipedia  

 All parents before us had gone through this same cycle of living following the same steps. Though the world is different in each century, what remains unique to all humans, are family. As parents, we all follow the same routine, bear children, nurture them, teach and protect them until they are adults. We go to any extent to push and control our children for education, good behavior, and, most importantly, try to give them better lives than we had. We want them to succeed in this world. When children become adults, parents simply fade away. We cannot change the process of aging, and leaving everyone behind is the way of life. That realization is painful now that the past becomes my present. I never realized how unsettling and lonely it feels to not have that authority or dependency over your children. Suddenly, our existence becomes obsolete.

Slowly but surely, we start to lose our abilities, sight, memory, and at the end, our mind. We lose everything we hold dear when we are unable to recognize our own children. This is true to all humans, rich or poor, successful, powerful, and powerless; they all will leave this world empty-handed. Those we left behind will move on as we become distant memories, and years later are forgotten. This is the cycle of life. We will go on living until the end, hoping our children will be safe and be happy in the world to come.

As an aging mother, I dream of yesterday because I have no dreams for tomorrow. Time has come to follow my own advice I’ve given to others; “don’t worry about yesterday, it’s gone forever, don’t wait for tomorrow, it may never come, all you have is now, so live in this very moment, as if it is your last.”   

Bea