back to the future

as i was rummaging through my old journals i came across this old page. it was a self-portrait, a sketch i did when i was 24. i smiled secretly realizing how i managed to capture myself, a youthful me. hair in tangles, unshaven. if i remember right, i did this just after a very tough day at work. i came home feeling so tired, so spent. i think i tried to draw myself just to have a record of that very day. how my inner eyes see the outer me in the mirror. nowadays, if you need to  keep a record of how you look on a certain moment, you can take a quick snapshot of yourself using your mobile phone's camera or even a your handy digital camera. oh, how life had changed!

even if it's not a photograph of myself, what's important is that this image had made me turn my back to the future. yes, back to the future. i know, i know, there is this famous film of the same title, but, when i say this, i meant differently. i am saying:  i am facing my past. so, my back is to the future. i am retrospecting.

how did i fare in life? now, that i'm beyond this 24-year old man? am i successful? am i a failure? was i able to achieve the goals i set during that time?
 
i want to keep my answers for myself.

honestly speaking, for me, the real measure of success is a state of being that is happy and at peace.

this, i realized:  the divine spark that drew that image years back  is the same divine spark that is typing this blog now. the physical self had changed. yes. no more hair that will get tangled, no more mustache, those eyes, they are now hiding behind  eyeglasses. yet, the inner man, the True Self had not aged. it is ageless. and it had remained a lover of the Infinite, it is continually trying to live a divine life. it will ever desire to be with the Love Unchanging, the Love Unbending ...

another page in my old journal has this sonnet i was blessed enough to write --

 july 24, 1982
  
now comes again the count of time, my own,
the years that had already fleeted by,
since i Sweet Life's pulsating pulse have known
and deemed to pursue it's beatings; till i
arrive at where the palpitations end
and into Stillness creep back once more,
or, perhaps not end, but beat on, to blend
with other pulsations of deeper core;
it is now twenty-four, my years, the years
that i've lived Life, and still the pulse i feel
just as before, so unchanged; the ear hears
the same enchanting song, the soothing trill
of birds invisible, the melody
that perhaps i'll hear through all eternity.