Remember

I was traveling towards the city when three little girls pranced into the train.
Young. Rambunctious. Indefatigable.
Do you remember how it was?
… Can you remember how it was?

Grins from ear to ear. Radiating wth youthful exuberance. They lifted my countenance… I was smiling in spite of myself. So contagious…
Will they remember how it was?

When did it all start?
The little hassles embedded in mundaneness of life. The striving.
The need to make that grade; to earn that amount; to get that promotion; to attract that dream girl…
All these… have subtly waltzed away with the simple pleasures of life.

The good life as a destination is a bottomless pit:

Before you get your class 3 licence, it’s a indispensable marker of the next phase of your life. After you get your class 3 licence, it’s just another card in your wallet.
Before you get that A grade, you would sacrificed nights of good sleep. After you get that A grade, it’s just another alphabet on your transcipt.
Before you get your little niche, you thought your sanity hedges on it. After you get a place of your own, you worry about maintaining it.

When was the last time you stopped to watch the clouds go by… to muse over the erratic shapes they take and how capricious they are?
The stray cat that roams is a spectacle… watch how she stretches and yawns… the way the ears move one after another as it turns its head this way and that.
Have you sat quietly and observed people on the streets… and wondered at how their lives are written on their faces? Laugh-lines around the eyes, train-tracks on their foreheads… And to be amazed at how a prune-face can be magically transformed by the upturning corners of the mouth?

Ambition? Yes of course.
Putting our best foot forward? Most certainly.

But must all these… sacrifice the spontanity we once had… and the appreciation we once had of little things…?