A little bit of you

We encounter a lot of people in our day to day life. Quite many of them leave traces of themselves somewhere in our psyche. Some create ripples on the surface and vanish. Deep impressions are left by a few. A handful may choose to leave scars too. A little bit of you lies within me and as much of me may lie within you too.

I remember hundreds of people who passed by me as colleagues or co-travellers, who sat with me as friends in my moments of grief and those who might have been victims of my associations with them. A little bit of them went into the making of what I am today. A little bit of you continues to add nuances to my psyche.

More often than not, we may not be aware of the bits and pieces of ourselves that we leave within others. As a teacher, I have had umpteen experiences of youngsters telling me how I influenced their thinking though I was never aware of the potential impact of certain things I said or did. Just the other day I received a series of messages on WhatsApp from a former student.

“I am used to this sort of a system in my life,” she wrote about yet another setback that had befallen her. Having reminded me of a very sad thing that happened to her at school, she wrote, “But then u were there to strengthen me or to tell me that sometimes we should love what comes our way and should not wish to get what we cannot have at all…”

Towards the end of her message, a smiley was embedded. I knew at once that the smiley was just a façade she had put upon her new sorrow. But I also knew that the smiley, a symbol of concealed pain, was in the right place because the girl’s message showed a wise acceptance of a certain situation which she couldn’t alter significantly because of given circumstances. “You are a wise girl and life will reward your wisdom one day. Best wishes.” That was all I could bring myself to write in response. Indeed her message revealed a wisdom beyond her age.

I went back on the memory lane to the days when I said a few words of encouragement or counsel to her. I never imagined that those words had magic in them. I never knew that I was reshaping the entire thinking of a youngster. I never realised how much of myself I was leaving within her.

I don’t think I did anything much for her in those days of her immense grief and confusion or later. I couldn’t help her to solve her problem since the solution lay beyond my control or power. All that I did was to help her make sense of what was happening to her.

As Vaclav Havel said, “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.”

When you can make sense of what is happening to you, of the agony imposed on you mercilessly by your destiny, the battle is won. I had learnt this from the long struggle I had as something more than a middle-age crisis. My excruciating struggles and the eventual little victories taught me a lot of lessons. Today I leave little bits of those lessons in the hearts of the youngsters who pass through my life at school. They leave similar bits of themselves in my heart too. The above-mentioned message which came from a person who is just turning to be eligible to cast her vote taught me much about the importance of the bits and pieces we leave in others.

PS. Written for Indispire:

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xZx