If I was born again today, in this body and this mind, with its current cognitive capacities and developed modes of expression, but otherwise a blank slate, I am not sure that I’d survive the day.

I would notice with an alarming urgency that with every passing day, it seems like people look a little distant, a little further away from me. Every commute, I notice strangers, or more accurately, the back of their heads as they are all turned away. Even in a crowded train, I am usually all alone.

And if I was pure again, I am not sure I’d understand. I’m unsure if I’d be able to take it — the sudden loss of the world. I guess in that infantile state, I would wonder what it was that had infected everyone. We might as well be gloomy and forlorn today but before everyone fit in and followed suit, there was optimism and before we could spell, we were full of life and every moment was opportune.

But then, slowly but steadily, Time happened. The most relentless force of nature withering away hope one disappointment at a time. It chipped away at all that is good, and all that is Me, and all that is holy. And it left behind a husk of a Man who once dared to dream big and had the courage to follow through.

What happened to me, who did this, who’s responsible, who’s the culprit?

Time did this. Or maybe it was the People.

Or maybe it was the expectations that were set up by ambitions too high — like a guillotine waiting to fall.

Or maybe it was the certainties in life. All that was promised to us was that we’d love things and that we’d lose them.

Or maybe it was the inevitability of failure mixed with the burden of eventual decay, the rising hope of each new opportunity followed by the deafening loss of it.

Or perhaps It was I.

Maybe I mistook a house of cards for a foundation of rock and built upon it structures too magnificent that neither God nor Soul could savour or save. Dreams too big for eyes not closed yet, bound to fail through no fault of their own.

But, Dream Big, they say so perhaps it is my efforts that fell short. Maybe I gave up too soon, caved in too fast, and buckled too quickly.

Or maybe, it is simply that not all things must come to pass.

And so we’re back to the world, its flaws and its imperfections in which we see our own failures reflected at scale.

Wisdom older than the wise whispers that the world is what it is and there is no fighting it. People of all walks tread the same earth but only those who try to do something — anything at all of value or worth in a world where “show not tell” is the name of the game — face hurdles.

We can lament about the unfairness of it all — being penalized for trying to fix problems we didn’t create in a world that we didn’t ask to be born in using tools that we were never really taught how to use effectively.

Or we can Accept It.

We can accept our meagerness, our insufficiencies and our lacunae so obvious and varied. We can learn to see beauty in our follies. And we can teach compassion by being kind to ourselves.

For if I was pure again, as back in the olden days, I would simply say to myself — “It’s okay.”

And maybe then the heads would start turning back again, faces new and strange but now no longer estranged. For the eternal struggle was never to connect but to go back Home.