Is this magic?

It appears and disappears,

like a magician’s rose.

A mirage, they say.

I close in on one, 

only to see another ahead,

much like my goals.

One after another keeps coming up,

I get tired yet I never dare stop,

for the fear of falling behind.

A mirage, you see,

is nature’s way of telling you to slow down,

to stop running after your mirage of destinies

And to simply take pleasure in the journey. 

One day, we went on a road trip and an anecdote from that trip led me to write this little poem.

Our road trips are always short but sweet. It was the beginning of the summer, a rather hot day. The front seats of the car were occupied by my dad and my brother. My mom and I were at the back.

It was around late afternoon, we turned back home. The picture outside our car seemed so bright from the sunlight like it was actually boiling.

We were all exhausted and none of us had any energy left to even turn on the stereo. Unlike how we went, we were returning in an outright different state. Deadbeat and sweaty.

Then I saw a mirage on the road.

And it slowly disappeared as our car moved closer to it.

Then I saw another one.

One more. It was quite intriguing that I kept observing it appear and disappear all the way home.

I asked my brother to look where I saw it. And as usual, being a brother, he’s always in a comeback mood. He said, “You see mirages when you’re tired.”

I was like “really.”

Then I ignored what he said, and replied, “ooh…there’s a big mirage over there.”

He responded with a rather smart comeback, “you must be growing more tired by every minute. The bigger the mirage, the more tired you are.”

I can’t believe what I heard. It was so clever.

That day I was actually a little bit tired. I had been working so much. I almost sure he made that up but at that time, it felt quite right.

But the point is, I kept thinking about what he said. It just stayed with me. The writer in me said that is such a deep thought.

If you think about it, we are chasing mirages all our lives.

And what do we get? Fatigue.

It’s our curiosity that leads us to one mirage after another, much like destinies.

Each one of us has multiple destinies. Thinking that one can have only one destiny is such a foolish thought. Life is nothing but the sum of our destinies. Good and bad.

We desperately rush from one mirage to another letting our curiosity get the best of us, wondering what lies behind that, expecting what we want might be found there.

And we don’t know when that curiosity might turn into a greedy green monster.

Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t pursue our dreams and destinies. I’m saying we shouldn’t be too obsessed with our destinies that we overlook the joy in the journey.

Just do your bit quietly and you’ll get there eventually.

Much love,

Nikki.

Thank you for reading