The Enlightenment

She glanced at the lush green grass outside and reminisced the last time she had walked barefoot on it. The rustle of the grass, yielding of sand and the touch of soft wet soil. This was an unusual moment for she could see all her life flash before her eyes, in spite of her frenzied attempts to fight the memories back. Countless thoughts swarmed as she recounted her childhood, her teens, the days with her friends and family, the incessant laughter, the long talks, the career highs. Not that her life only had sunny days, she indeed had seen many ups and downs, and many dark nights, but none of them were comparable to the darkness she now felt around her.

She was lying down curled up on a hospital bed in a cramped room. The emptiness of the room managed to match the emptiness she was feeling inside. She lifted her head and glanced at the pallid roof and whispered, her voice breaking, ”Why me? Why it had to be me?”, trying invain to elicit an answer from the one sitting above, one who holds the leashes to this world. She very well knew that the accident had changed her entire life in the blink of an eye. Yet her heart adamantly refused to accept the truth. Her eyes welled up as she thought about her career as an athlete. She would never be able to walk on her feet normally and feel the grass crunch under her, let alone run on it.

Suddenly she saw a light or had she just hallucinated, she couldn’t tell. Something just pulled her into a world of thoughts. She saw images of the people whom she loved and who loved her equally. These loved ones are her possessions that would remain with her through thick and thin, through joys and gloom. Those who would believe in her and would always be with her even if tides were not in her favour, or even if she was not an athlete, because for them what mattered was not the shields she had won on the field but what her heart had to offer. A perusal of her past convinced her that her biggest achievements weren’t the trophies she had won, but rather the hearts she had won.

Her unconditional love, the trust put in by others on her, the smiles she had brought on sullen faces, and how she had always bagged remarks of being the best daughter, friend and wife. This was the greatest accomplishment, something she had achieved with the purity of her heart, a unique knack that no accident could take away. She felt contentment and was rather surprised considering how low she felt a while ago.

She realized the strength that she had been rummaging for all this while had always been with her, rather inside her. Sometimes the biggest discoveries are the ones made inside your own self. Sometimes it takes a lifetime for a person to comprehend what his self craves for, or what will satiate the thirst of his soul, the hunger of his being. And she was fortunate for having discovered the fireball inside her that had thus far remained quiescent.

She finally came out of her thought process when her husband entered with her discharge papers and a warm smile on his face. He surprised her by telling her about the ‘welcome back’ party that her friends and family had thrown for her. She revered the aptness of the party’s title, it was indeed a coming back for her from the clutches of pessimism. A big smile appeared across her face. The sun continued to cast its rays stridently on the street below and now it was not the only luminous thing that shone.