A glimmering light of hope

It felt different, for obvious reasons. The year was coming to an end with a new one approaching but unlike the gone past, it felt dull. There was no driven excitement within to celebrate, light up the dwelling or go out with friends because none were left.

I walked across the lanes adjacent to a river with the winter at its peak. The cold breeze was punishing but it was still better than staying enclosed back in my condo. Maybe a walk outdoors could drive out the gloom.
The neighborhood was not strange to me, neither the worn-out roads nor the wrecked structures, the only difference was that I had known this place once in a much better state than it was right then.

As I went further into the hood, I initially stopped and considered taking a different path, and even after being a bit hesitant, I saw myself marching in with mixed feelings. Not that I hated the place, but I had too much affection for it considering the most cherishable period of my life was spent in here with the people who had been engulfed in the rage of war. The vivid memories that once brought a smile now brought pain. Everywhere I looked, everything that came into sight was reduced to waste. The glory and elegance that the locality upheld for so long lay within the debris scattered all around. The lavish residences where the wealthiest of the hood resided were sabotaged, the walls which served as a canvas to my teen self for graffiti stood colorless and broken, the rooftop eatery in the corner of the street, where I remember hanging out with my companions on weekend nights had been demolished after an adjacent apartment fell over it.

As I took a turn on the crossroad, I came across the general library which was where I spent most of my childhood, nourishing my geeky soul by reading for hours at a stretch unaware of the floating time. The most exhilarating experiences of my life included exploring Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, roaming in the endless space in a giant elevator, witnessing Steve Jobs build one of the most valuable companies in the world, learning witchcraft at Hogwarts, etc. The fact that all of it happened in that library. But it was no more the same ocean of literature that I knew before, it had instead turned into a pool of rubble, wreckage surrounding the place which had taught me more than anything else in life. It felt frustrating to think about how violence and blood could reduce knowledge and information to waste.

I don’t care if the purpose of this armed conflict was fulfilled for either side or not, but it did make every human lose their purpose in life, at least for me.

But my feelings of lost hope were overturned when I came across yet another residence that succumbed to the violence, but unlike the locality, it did not reflect dullness and sorrow. Instead, it was lit up with Christmas lights and decorations. The wreckage and the destruction were overshadowed by the illumination of the beautiful lights which blinked in patterns. The walls were covered with stars and chocolates made out of origami paper. There were Santa hats and Christmas stockings hung over the gates.

Amid all the darkness, the house lit up its surroundings and metaphorically represented a glimmering light of hope that stood in the middle of all the agony and suffering waiting to be discovered within us.
Hence in search of that hope within me, I walked towards my residence, realizing a few things.

Being sorry for the loss would only bring in pain, and in a world, as such where there was no one left to console us, we were our only caretakers left. Forgoing the dead would be hard, and getting used to their absence would take time, but embracing what was left would only make the sufferings easier to bear and the leftover life livable, the way it was.