Learning from parting

Life has a way of testing you repeatedly in similar ways.

But hey, Life, I can beat ya this time!

The absolute hardest test of my life was leaving home, hearth and loved ones (which included, most definitely, my cat) to begin life on foreign shores. Losing a parent followed soon. Strangely enough, the act of cutting physical ties and moving from home steeled me for successive life tests like no other. I probably would not have been able to make it through the loss of a parent in as stoic of a manner as I did had it not been for going through the pain and torment of that first real test life put me through.

And then, life has a curious way of coming full circle.

I face the same test - again. With the looming prospect of travel, albeit short-lived and temporary, I feel the old pain making a revisit. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would be the other way around  - that a piece of my heart would get left behind on those very same foreign shores, the journey to which had shattered my heart into smithereens. And that that piece of my heart would cause me the same ache as that first journey across the seven seas.

But yes, this time, Life, I've learnt. I've learnt resiliency from the very lessons you taught me. I will be fine. That magnificent being, to whom that piece of my heart belongs, will be fine. The proof lies in the pudding, Life, the proof lies in the pudding. Where earlier, Dickinson's tragic 'parting is all we need to know of hell' would have reverberated in my soul, today, Gibran's more pragmatic 'ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation' and George Elliot's 'only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love' resonate with me.

Here's to learning and growing.