No. I am not ready to die.

I was intent on chewing a pencil when all of a sudden I noticed that the pencil had dwarfed itself. Oh my! It was me who had dealt its size a blow. I needed a whack for doing it. A notification on my mobile distracted me and I opened it to check. Oh no! Radha's husband had suffered a severe stroke and was scheduled to be operated upon in a couple of hours. Through the film of tears, I once again noticed the pencil that seemed similarly dejected. Oh God! Life had whacked me and the pencil seemed to echo my pain.

Well, my thoughts drifted to my closest friend. Hadn't she received a slap from life, a rather painful one in fact? This induced a chain of thoughts in my mind which was always in an overthinking zone. I sharpened the pencil and watched it smile. It seemed happy for now it wasn't too tall but the right size. I realized how I had cut it down only to resize it perfectly. I know that my absentminded nature shall once again play truant with the pencil and this game by the two of us shall continue till it is discarded by me either when it serves no useful purpose or when I decide to get a new one. I smiled at the tete a tete with my train of thoughts.

Life was eyeing me, helping me reconnect the dots. Ah! I was life's pencil, wasn't I? It was slapping me to size by reshaping me, chewing on my ego. Unlike the inanimate pencil, I was human and aware. I needed regular slaps from life to be cut down to the right size. Yet, I wasn't grateful to life and often felt like walking away to a dead zone. Death seemed a heavenly escape from life. A foolish thought indeed. I must visit radha and prep her up. Ah! How wonderfully this adversity from life was making me see things from the right perspective. I shook myself from every negative thought that was lately overpowering me. I had almost given up, wanting to embrace death.

A booming voice from within me now seemed to be telling life 'I am not ready to die because it requires infinitely greater courage to live' There was a new spring in my step as I mustered all my courage to go prep up my friend, radha. Life may seem to take away our courage, yet we fail to realize how it in fact makes us more courageous by periodically showing us death's face. Isn't death just an illusory fear to help us actually live? Courage walks inside when fear goes out. Who wants to die? Not me. I'm not yet ready.