Life: An Insatiable Appetite

I am in 'my' Gwalior for the past couple of days and as much as I enjoy being here, I have a sense of losing something at the same time. This is my last evening here and so I was sitting with my mom simply chatting. It has become some sort of ritual for us. My last evening before heading to Delhi is always spent lying beside mom lazily and chatting with her on all sorts of subjects while she sits there, patiently listening to me and answering all my questions. It is something that sums up my vacations - a long chat with her, about everything, accompanied by something to eat and followed by a piece of advice. This evening she said something to me which I guess I am going to remember more than any other advice that she ever gave me. Just when I was having a feeling of sadness about losing something she stepped in as my savior and I don't know whether she knew what I was going through or not, but her advice seemed just what I needed at the moment. She told me "No one ever gets everything. Life is mean to each one of us and hence it is important to know the art of detaching oneself from everything in life. Never make anything or anyone so important that if they ever leave, they take a part of your soul with them."  I realized how true these words are. We all have a long list of what we want from life. Some of us want to be rich, some happy, some both rich and happy, some long for that one special person in their life and some long for a whole new life. We are never satisfied with what we have. And the worse part is that not many of us know how to lose in life. From our childhood we are taught to fight to win, to survive. Unfortunately, we are never taught how to deal with failures in life. And even though we might be taught how to deal with failure in examinations at school and college, none of us are taught how to deal with failure in love, or in life.