Have you ever read a book and felt like, “Oh, I have had it so much better than these characters in my life.” I have had everything, I am living my best life, and yet something is missing. I was just reading ‘Never Let Me Go’ by Kazuo Ishiguro – aloud – sitting on the sofa and I felt a large tear making its way down my cheek to my chin. I’m not even halfway through, just at a random part where the protagonist is with her friend and they have a conversation by the lake. It was such an innocent moment in the book, and I can’t remember last when I experienced something that pure.

There’s been this weird feeling clinging to me ever since today morning, and I haven’t been able to figure out what. But when I read these few pages, I was sucked into this void that gave me so much peace – the amount that I didn’t remember when I had felt.

Have you ever read a book and felt like, “Oh, this line was meant for me,” or “I wish I’d come across this last month, I might’ve reacted better,” or “I wish time stopped right now”. I wanted the time to stop. I wanted the Sun to remain where it was, the curtains to never move, and the trash outside the door to never be collected just because even the slightest change would pull me out of the void just like a fish from the water.

Honestly, there was nothing special about this paragraph but I knew just the person I would want to spend that moment with. I bet a lot of people will read this and then text me with prying eyes, “WHO?”

I wish I was sitting by the lake with my parents, not even having a conversation but just spending time and watching each second come and go like a wave does at the shore. I wish it was the friends that I miss the most, the ones I haven’t seen in the longest time. I wish it were my sister who I can laugh with like a freak. I wish it wasn’t just me. At this point I can see myself by the lake having the time of my life, not even realising what is missing on the inside but I still wonder, how did that book send me to the void that sent me this epiphany that I knew what was missing?

Maybe it is all in my head, maybe I am doing an incredible job at failing my attempts of adapting stoicism. I know, the world seems to you the way you perceive it and I perceive it as the most beautiful thing in the world and yet, why do we feel that the world becomes a little less beautiful after a certain moment passes?

Have you ever read a book and felt like, “Satisfaction is a spectre that pulls you out of the shackles of reality?”

~ Muskaan Darshan

5th December 2021, Sunday