Litmus Paper

I'm big on signs. I look for them everywhere - on the roads, in airports, on the doors of an office building, near swimming pools, on the grass in parks. Admirable things, aren't they? They guide you in the best possible way.

I believe that life gives us similar signs - either most of us are too obtuse to pick up on them (like I am when I wander in Walmart without my spectacles on and hence can't spot the "Breads" section) or they are too abstruse for the most of us (like they were for me when I was in Andhra Pradesh - all the department stores boards are in Telugu - a language completely "Dutch" to me).

However, I also believe that if something that will have far-reaching consequences is imminent or we have to make a choice we'll have to live with for a long long time, life's signals will be very conspicuous. In fact, they'd be so loud that they'd all but slap us in the face.

I'd borrow HW Longfellow's lines here - most of the people we meet in our life and most of the situations we survive - they're all like ships that pass in the night. There is one thing that spurs us on through all this rigmarole - our very own restlessness. Even the most placid of us have an innate restlessness to move onto better things. It's a happy human indeed that loses this restlessness - for this means that he can now be contented without reservations.

You aren't aware of being in the clutches of this restlessness unless you're free from it. It's like losing excessive weight - when you lose it, then you realize that you indeed feel nicer; when you don't lose it, you are in denial - "you don't need to lose it anyway".

And this, my friends, is the litmus paper that gives perfect blue/pink results for our lives - the sign, the indicator, the omen, the portent or the harbinger for something/someone we wouldn't feel contented without. If it is a place, you know that this is where you are meant to be, even if you'd thoroughly enjoyed the journey that brought you here. If it is a thing, you know that this is what you want. If it is a vocation, you know that this is what you want to pore over at breakfast when your eyes are still blurry from sleep. If it is a person, you know that this is whom you want to spend your days, even the bad-haired ones (actually, especially the bad-haired ones), with.

If you haven't been restless in a long period of time, you know you've got it. Life's signaling - did you miss it?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S.: For the few of you who read my blog regularly (or rather, as "regularly" as I post stuff), I know that I have mentioned somewhat similar ideas in "Moving On...". It just seems as though I can never escape thoughts that often emerge from brutal introspection.