Odysseys.

Have you ever wanted to go some place more than any other place in this entire Universe? Well, I have. 

It's that time of the semester when you are inching towards completion but you are just not there yet because LIFE. Every day a new job comes along and it's pretty much like a Christmas Tree decoration - it clings to you and weighs you down. 

At this moment, we need motivation and we need to explicitly GET UP AND RUN TO THE FINISH LINE. I've been quite frustrated off late thanks to the monotony of life. It's OKAY to be happy and it's more than okay to be sad about something, but to be nothing at all - now that actually scares me. I almost thought I've lost all reasons to go on, until a tiny something that happened in class today. I have exactly 20 minutes (break time) to make this thought remotely resemble a blog post. So here goes nothing. 

When I was 11, I had a mad urge to pack my bags and go to Tokyo. I am not kidding, I was actually very inclined to wake up one day and grab some clothes and just GO. Of course, an 11 year old kid doesn't really know about the realistic limitations on this decision - such as VISA and money and air fare and so on. All I wanted was to see Tokyo. 

I had no family members who had gone there, I had no idea of the distance, heck I did not even know how to get to the nearest airport, let alone another country. But I had dreams and I did not let them vanish into the emptiness. For me, Tokyo was not just any city - it was a city of a billion dreams. When I read The Little Girl at The Window, I had a surreal, almost fantastical vision of Tokyo inside of my head. It was sometimes a quiet rendition of walkways with cherry blossoms on either side. It was sometimes a busy, modern city with too many cars and shops and people. It was the symbolism of a torrid past, a bustling present and an intelligent future. I wanted, more than anything, to believe in the Tokyo inside of my head. 

                                           

                                           

I had read so much about Japan. I had the quintessence of Japanese culture morphed into my brain. I wanted to travel this land that I had read so much about. As much as I loved the secure life I was leading, I yearned to set eyes upon Tokyo. I binge watched a lot of anime and read a lot of manga, and somewhere along the way I fell in love with this city, fell in love with this country and to put it simply - I really just fell in love. 

Even now I wonder, that all the time people waste in falling in love with other people - if they only fell in love with places, they'd be less disappointed. 

As time flew by, I started dreaming of other places too. I read about Austen's England and Fitzgerald's America and nothing was the same for me. I felt like places, more than anything else became my reason to live. The hope that one day I will get there - stand next to the very place I had read about and take a photo to capture that amazing moment. I know people dream, but I think for me, the dream had mounted to a maddening passion. 

I wanted to stand at King's Cross and feel what Harry felt when he boarded the train to Hogwarts. I wanted to run across the landscape in New Zealand, and feel like I am in Middle-Earth. I wanted to drive through New York in a fancy car and for once feel like Jay Gatsby. I wanted to look out of a window in Amsterdam and spy on the city like Anne Frank. I wanted to walk through Kyoto and somehow, see the world through the eyes of Himura Kenshin. 

Of course, these are but dreams. In the midst of college, I sometimes I forget that I even have these dreams. This has happened so many times. All the work and all the delusional happiness sometimes brings you down. I look around and see people who are happy with other people, people who are happy with other jobs, people who are happy with other lives. And at this moment, every thing I do seems petty and pathetic. They say the grass is greener on the other side and this is perhaps the truest of all sayings. I sometimes honestly feel that I can never be happy because I have nothing to live for. 

But something quiet interesting happened today in class. My Lecturer said something that brought back a flood of memories. He said, "I won't be able to solve your doubts next Friday because I'm going to Tokyo." And he smiled. And for that one moment, the image of an 11 year old kid packing her bags and telling her Mom that she's "going to Tokyo" flashed through my mind. I felt a surge of appreciation for my Lecturer because he had unknowingly reminded me of that one crazy, mad dream which had dominated my childhood. My mind which was settling into a spiral of darkness, seemed to have suddenly spotted the sun. I wanted to leave the class and run outside. I wanted to just pack all my bags and leave for Tokyo. Somewhere deep inside, I wished to reach that stage in life when I could really just make a spontaneous decision like this and go with it.

I think that the one reason I actually have to live, the one reason which is purely my own decision is this. I was living to go places and make my own Odyssey. And in completely normal non-literary language this would translate to - "Screw people, screw homework. I'm travelling." After all, what's the point of living if you are not living for something?

Have you ever wanted to go some place more than any other place in this entire Universe? Well, I have. And I know Tokyo is waiting for me :)