A smiling face does not always mean that a person is happy. Smile is something that can hide anything which is going on in a person’s mind. But it can hide the pain only to a certain limit. Truly said “There’s a pain in laughter. The funniest people are often the saddest.” This phenomenon is also called as smiling depression. Just as you cannot judge a book by its cover, you cannot conclude that a person is happy just because he is smiling.
Every single human being you pass by is fighting to find peace, to get through their daily tasks without breaking down. Pain-ravaged people are everywhere and we are quite oblivious to them. But no one wears the sign – I AM STRUGGLING, SO BE NICE TO ME. And since they don’t, it’s up to you and me to look more closely and be more considerate towards them.
When I was going through this painful phase where I lost my mom, I was totally a different person. I would sit on park benches for hours pushing back tears, fighting to stay upright, and always seconds away from being a total freak out. Anyone passing by me, looked deeply into my bloodshot eyes or sometimes noticed the occasional break in my voice and simply would ask me what’s wrong. Frankly speaking, at that point of time I was so lost and frustrated that I simply wanted to wear a sign that said: I LOST MY MOM. PLEASE GO EASY. Gradually with time, I learned to live with the pain. Though I started smiling, I was never happy. So, you see a smiling face doesn’t guarantee happiness.
Time was never benevolent enough to give me a chance. My mother’s death was a tough lesson for me that life is so uncertain. I wish destiny had this lesson conveyed to me in a different manner.When things go wrong with you, you are actually the one who has to face everything. No one can ever understand an inch of your pain that you are going through, no one has any idea of the gaping sinkhole that has just opened up and swallowed the normal life of yours. When I lost my mother, it was difficult to keep myself “under control,” and so I kept myself frantically busy. I would devote all my time to work and exhaust myself until late at night and spend hours doing whatever I could to distract myself from acknowledging what I already knew in order to run away from my grief. But I could never understand that one of the biggest myths about pain and grief is that time is the best healer which is never true. Time does not heal anything, the pain remains there always with you, surrounding you, engulfing you every second. It is you, who eventually get used to it and start living with the pain.
Death indeed is the saddest reality of life. The one and the only thing which makes me shiver from the inside. My life was no longer worth living, it felt meaningless. No matter whatever I do to move away from this pain; my heart knows that it is a task which I will never be successful at. This void will never be filled and it is a never-ending grief I will have to live with all throughout my life. Deep within I also knew that everyone around is experiencing the collateral damage of living, in one way or the other. They are all grieving someone, fighting their own battle, missing someone and are worried about someone. I guess this is what life is all about.
I am someone who feels things deeply and have a lot of trouble in cutting people from my life. It is too tough to imagine your life without the people whom you consider your world. The last thing I would want to do on earth is to leave the people I love behind and move on in life without them. This phase in life is like a terrible black hole which engulfs every bit of happiness and makes you a zombie. All you are left with is only loneliness, nostalgia and sadness as your all-time companions.
This is life and this is the journey of life. Daunting and tiring; a long and rough road which has no map, no driver and no fellow travelers to guide you the way back home. You need to decide the route and manage your way through it all; even in the oddest of seasons and through the roughest paths. Just as every dark cloud has a silver lining, there is always hope for better things to come. No matter how hard the hidden stories around us might be, if you look with the right eyes, you’ll see the signs. Be considerate, be loving because all happy faces aren’t happy. Keep holding the rope of hope and someday you will find that ray of hope for yourself in life.
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