SYMPHONY

Times when at the end of a marriage, you find out your heart is with someone else, or after you have become a medical doctor, you find out you had wanted to be a musician. Read on

While men celebrated, all happy, I looked down into my life, filled with wrath. Anger squeezed my face. What an irony. I looked around me, my friends, my mates, with joyful smiles amidst their families and friends. Plates bled and bottles clicked. Shouts! Shouts filled the air. Shouts of joy and triumph and success. But mine seemed disdainful. No body here knows me. Not even a family member, though that's not the issue. I looked down at this new step with indignation. It was my woe, my plight, my curse. Was this ever my dream or have I just wasted my years? I wouldn't want to believe I have wasted my years. Far from it. But this is not my success. Not at all. This is my responsibility, my strife, my struggle. Do I have to fight it? Do I continue in this struggle that I so much abhor with with utmost impunity? Is there any chance of survival? Is it possible to see light at the end of the tunnel or am I to meet groaning darkness? This is my woe!
But this is what gives me unending joy, to dance to the tunes of nature, to watch the sun rise from the east over my face, with circling rings of gold, striding down west and then disappearing behind the hill of green. This is what gives me unending joy, to put smiles on wretched faces and lift burdens off suffering shoulders. It is what gives me unending joy to mourn the mourning of the bereaved, to share the tears of the widow and to lift the good of the orphan. 'To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony'.

Author's Note

Carefully consider punctuation