The fragments

 

We, individually, are fragmented stories; almost incomplete stories somehow patched up together by various factors like family, friends, town, country, jobs, fears, joys, agonies, advantages, disadvantages. These fragments are always falling apart, trying to run their own course, to become complete stories in themselves. That’s why we feel tension and restlessness.

We are merely bigger fragments made of smaller ones. The bigger fragment wants to pursue its own completion; the smaller ones their own. At different times, we are both larger and smaller than the sum total of all the fragments in us. It fluctuates. Our sum total. When we feel bigger, we look confident of going in a specific direction; when smaller, we are pulled apart by anxiety and uncertainty. A rambling house actually.

Many times the pieces fall apart and we rush to gather them in panic. With what we call our life, we maintain an invisible line around us, our boundary, the decider of our domain—our ego, our vulnerabilities. We are fighting to keep our fragments within this dominion. Because beyond that is the plain fear of falling apart beyond collection, getting destroyed, melting in oblivion.