Bookish legacy

So I was a poet. A published poet. Finally. After years and years of waiting. Happy? Yes, absolutely. Yet there was a part of me that just couldn’t come to terms with this.

Why was that? Because all this has happened when I am 49. Suddenly I find I’m running out of time and I have so much more that I need to write and share with the world.

So where have I been? What have I been doing with my life all these years?

And I realise, with regret, that all these years, in spite of having the time, the energy and the resources to do what I had always dreamt of doing, I had been wasting all that in the pursuit of something that society demanded of me, something society has made us believe would give one security, define a purpose to one’s life and hence, confer happiness.

Society, I tell you, is so unimaginative!

But it’s better late than never, isn’t it? Better late to realise that the purpose of one’s life is what is intrinsic to one’s self and not what is dictated by society and that one’s happiness depends on oneself and not on something or someone outside of us.

And that the legacy one can leave behind need not necessarily be a progeny of the flesh but can also be an offspring of the mind and heart.

Something like a book, for instance?
Vidya Shankar

Published in The Gulf Today / Short Take, dt Jan 20, 2018)
http://www.gulftoday.ae/portal/47295567-bc1d-4449-a3d0-5dab10ec8b74.aspx

Here's my first book! An ensemble of poetry and photographs.
Click the link below to watch a 30-second promo video.
https://youtu.be/5BhbjMaIwpkwww.facebook.com