Of sunflowers and broken hearts

Heartbreaks are messy creatures. As I woke up, still groggy and stiff after days of self-imposed hibernation to deal with one, the trail of destruction seemed colossal. Taking in the sight of half empty food cartons piling into a pyramid, a calendar robbed off 20 days, the pleading sun poking in from behind drawn curtains, dishevelled hair which my niece could’ve easily borrowed to house her garden sparrows, I realised I never really knew how nasty a heartbreak could be until we crossed paths.

With some order restored in the physical surroundings, I set out for the tougher restoration – a healed heart and a stronger mind. Crisp evening air in the park appeared to be a miraculous tonic before dusk descended along with its share of happy fairy tale couples, nudging bygone memories to life. On the way back, instinctively, my peppy Metallica playlist was squeezed out by a melancholy bunch I’d been meaning to delete for the last 20 days.

Getting on with the next day, I found that workplace can be a heavenly refuge. Channelising your energy into meaningful ways is very helpful since it also boosts your self-esteem by many notches. But perhaps there is a threshold beyond which you start inviting suspicious looks for the sudden super energised and superwoman transformation, not to mention the complaints from a grumpy body which has spent its precious reserves weathering an emotional hurricane.

One must never give up. All it takes is some distraction and, in the times we live, it is just a click away. Catching up on where all the rest have partied and holidayed since I became a social media recluse, it finally worked; especially with all those announcements of spring mega sales popping up on the screen margins. Five minutes into the virtual world therapy, and the lesson had dawned. Technology is not the friendliest way to recover in a world where your friend’s friend is a friend of friend of someone you spent an entire day forgetting.

It was back to classical ways of coping then. A good book to beat the bogging blues. Flipping through, I found a few philosophical gems about the never ending human spirit. Like a sunflower seeking light even if relegated to the darkest corners, we have an innate forward moving instinct. In darker times, it may hide, but is never lost.

Pondering over the power of hope, I thought of the countless struggles waged for a taste of freedom, oceans crossed in search of brighter shores, a thousand failed experiments before the ancestor of the bulb on my wall glowed in Edison’s lab. Like all seemingly insurmountable peaks, this glum phase too shall be conquered. Tomorrow will always be a better day because there is nothing that hope cannot heal. Trust the sunflowers and move on.