Life is a journey

    He glanced up at the poster on the opposite wall of his room. On it, were the golden words he’d lived his whole life by - ‘Life is a journey; heaven is the destination’. He still remembered the day they put that up. When he was six, his father had lifted him high in the air so he could pin up that poster.  And his mother had looked him in the eye and told him to remember these words all his life.

Back then, he was just a typical bubbly 6year old whose life was confined to the safety of his parents’ arms. So much had changed in those 11 years. Here he was, 17 years old, staring at the same poster and wondering if his whole life had been a lie.

Everything that he had done, was to please someone else. To make others happy. He had joined the football team at school to please his football crazy father. He hated football. He had joined the cricket team to be included by his cricket crazy friends. He hated cricket.

He loved art. He wanted to draw and paint. To color the canvas of the world with his imagination. Art let him speak a language that made him feel understood. It let him express things for which words were never good enough.

The poster on the wall stared back at him. ‘Life is a journey; heaven is the destination’. His mother had told him that he would only earn a place in heaven by doing things that people liked. Putting a smile on other people’s faces. Even if it came at the cost of his own happiness. The last line rang in his head.

Even at the cost of his happiness? Was anything more important than his own happiness? Of course, doing things for other people made him happy, but in this endless quest to satisfy others, he had neglected his own right to a happy life.

Now, everything he did in his life was for someone else. He didn’t want to play football. He didn’t want to play cricket. He didn’t want to cook. He didn’t want to do whatever his parents and friends thought he should do. He wanted to do what he loved best. Draw and paint and fill his life with color.

And, in that moment, he knew what his parents had told him was wrong. What was the point of living if you were doing everything in your life thinking about heaven, hell, death, afterlife or whatever people believed in? Wasn’t it better to live freely, doing whatever you loved and not chasing things that made other people happy, but left you with nothing?

He knew what the poster said was wrong. And, he knew just what to do. Jumping out of bed, he searched his drawers for a red marker. Walking over to the poster, he struck out ‘heaven’ and wrote ‘happiness’ in its place.

He glanced up at the poster on the opposite wall of his room. On it, were the golden words he was going to live the rest of his life by - ‘Life is a journey; happiness is the destination’.