A: Accept #Step1

First, a poem by Robert Frost. “Acceptance”  ‘When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, ‘Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night bee too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.’At some point of time or the other we have to stop and take stock of our lives. And accept it for what it is. Take now, for example. In my lifetime any shutdown has been unprecedented. I remember my father telling me about black-outs during the Bangladesh war and stuff like that, I remember the 9 am siren that used to ring in the Calcutta of yore but nothing else. I was too young to have felt it myself. Now, with growing wonder and sometimes panic I have been watching as the world slowly shut down… our cities being no exception. There are times when the isolation (felt even in a full house) feels complete. And frustrating. There are times when I feel that my marriage has survived only because the spouse and I see each other barely more than ten hours a day, the majority of which is spent sleeping. There are times like I feel like the only thing I want to do now that will possible keep me sane is to go out for a coffee with a friend. There are times that the day stares bleakly out at me, each like the other, monotonous and endless. You know what? It’s okay to feel this way. Just accept it. Accept that feeling. It happens. I will not tell you that you need to cheer up or pull up your socks, because it’s perfectly fine to feel these things. We just need to accept and acknowledge them. It does not mean that they are here to stay. When I take the dogs to the terrace in the evening and we goof around with a ball and I watch the sun set and the birds twittering around, I’m happy, I’m content. I’m even glad that the sound of horns blaring and auto rickshaws and people are not there, I’m happy and at peace. I accept that too.What I guess I’m saying is that we need to face things as they are, no excuses. And accept it all. With the warts and flaws and the places where they pinch. Only then can we understand exactly where we stand. And of course, the only way ahead is forward. Think about it.