Ah, how time changes all things.

Your idols of yesterday can become your friends of today and acquaintances of tomorrow. All it takes is a flash of the little hands of the watch, or maybe a few billion of them, and suddenly you find yourself in a universe so different. And what adds to the endearing romance of this moment is that sometimes this momentous alteration can take place suddenly and wit ha rush and only because of one small realization. One moment can change the universe, one moment can rob you of the light and a moment can give you the gift of life.

One day the heavens revolved around the earth and the next day we learnt it wasn’t our earth but really the sun. There really was no change in the universe, just a realization. And it transformed the way we perceive reality. It makes you question, question the essence of everything you had stood fo till that moment. Realization I say is the birth of character.

Today, or maybe yesterday, but truly in a single moment my universe changed its axis, I dotn know if this change was finally towards the sun but certainly it isn’t the earth anymore. A simple realization that is so mundane that we seem to miss the value of its message. Time can change anything. And it doesn’t even need to change everything to affect everything.

I was talking to kiddo today, and on a similar strain the day before. And for the first time ever, her telling me about the ‘new guy’ in her life had no effect on me except for true elation and excitement. Like a little boy whose friend just told him about a new ice cream he’s discovered.

No fear, no panic, no remorse. No pain, no doubt. Pleasure and excitement. Pure and simple. And the realization that caused this change was simple.

She isn’t perfect.

Maybe I should rephrase. She was never perfect, god forbid she ever will be or I ever meet perfection personified. What I mean is that as the little boy who fell in love for the first time, the one to whom she would forever be ‘the one that got away’, the world could have never provided a more exhilarating example of an idol to adore.

Like the fire that guides us through life, feeding our passion, burning our emotions, she was the aim that kept me going. Earn to please her, feel to tell her, jump with joy just to see her try higher. My life was dedicated to keeping her happy, because doing that made me feel complete. I have seen in all these movies this side character who makes it his/her mission to help the ace meet the challenge the world has thrown open and I kept wondering to myself. This is so noble, to give oneself up so that another may reach the goal you could not. To achieve perfection or its closest semblance. But even then I would repeat to myself, that cannot be me. I need to reach for the goal myself. But all these years I was becoming the aide who would help her achieve happiness.

Some of my friends hate what I did to myself at the cost of helping her, some admire it and others simply accept it. Thankfully none of them ever take it out on her.

Ah let me come back to the point. Over these years the objective of keeping her happy was my personal pursuit of perfection and happiness. Keeping her happy truly made me happy. It doesn’t feel all that noble ( I accept it does a little) and it feels more selfish than I would have accepted earlier. The journey has given me more than I could have imagined a mere 5 years ago. And today I learnt. She isn’t who she was anymore. A few years ago the one thing I could not stop adoring her for was her die-hard romanticism. The pure belief that her objective in life was to love. But over the years I have observed what might be called maturity, acceptance, mutation … there is no lack of differing opinions, but the facts remain, I have seen that part of her change and maybe it is dead today. She accepts that vanity matters to her. She accepts arrogance is important for her as an aphrodisiac. That my humility and lack of looks was the first hurdle in our being a couple but in fact was the biggest catalyst to our becoming the life-long-bound-souls we have ended up becoming. She isn’t perfect anymore because there is no longer that fire in her to pursue. She needs a relationship like I craved for my first one. I’m still hungry but not craving anymore but hers has become a sort of a need. It almost made me sad for her till I realized, maybe I’m just being bitter and judgmental because she’s had three relationships while I have none.

And here cometh the second realization. Something that had already bit me in the ass and kicked me in the face when I had ended one of the darkest chapters of my life. Just like the pursuit of perfection gave my life meaning, so does the pursuit of happiness. What I was about to label as a flaw in her to drop her from my altar of perfection is actually a realization that the alter I now worship is even higher than her, she hasn’t fallen but my aim has risen. Her road to happiness was my idol. The answer always lay before me but I lacked that one element I’ve been circumambulating in this entire monologue. My aim changed.

To the altar of “Happiness is reason enough to do, to be and to will.”