When the dust settles.

"There is peace in abandonment. There is peace in knowing that nobody expects anything from you."

There’s something about abandoned things that evokes a feeling of empathy inside me. Obviously, there was a time when that thing was wanted and needed. It would have been a witness to a lot of happy memories. Sad ones too.

The hero of our little blog today is a sofa. An old, over-used, dirty yellow sofa. It sits there at the end of the street all alone. It doesn’t seem to fit in much with it’s peers in the environment but when has that ever been a deal breaker? The weirder the better. Maybe that’s why it caught my eye. The fact that it stands out. On rare occasions it serves it’s purpose when tired workmen take their naps on it. Sometimes old people rest their bags on it. I pass by it every morning and it greets me with a somber hello. I wouldn’t blame it. All it does all day is sit around (pun intended). Then I see it at night, with the streetlight shining on it. It glows in complete darkness. It almost looks a shade cleaner. I’ve thought many a times how can there be so much beauty in melancholy.

I wonder what the people who owned it once might be doing now. Do they ever miss it? Did somebody cry when they could no longer have it? Or was it so bad that nobody noticed it’s absence. Maybe the owner deliberately bought a yellow sofa to bring joy and light into the family. But now, something would’ve replaced it. Our sofa lies abandoned. Somebody once said that there is peace in abandonment. There is peace in knowing that nobody expects anything from you. More importantly, the notion of not disappointing anyone is blissful. As morbid as it sounds, it makes me wanna ask the sofa if it ever feels relieved.

  It’s interesting how sometimes abandoned objects can be used for other purposes than the ones they were intended to be used for. Like growing a plant in an old shoe or making a vase out of old bottles. This sofa, with time had become a little sanctuary for animals and birds. One day I was walking past it when I saw a little piece of paper poking from under the cushion. It was neatly folded. I was so intrigued that I couldn’t just walk away. I removed the piece of paper and opened it. It read, “Same place, same time, next Friday.” It had no initials. I noticed myself smiling at the piece of paper. Under my very nose, this sofa had become a meeting spot for people. Possible lovers?

Here I was feeling pity for this sofa while all along it has been an important part in people’s lives. Us humans tie ourselves to finding that one big purpose in life. The obvious purpose. The one people tell you that it’s your purpose. And sometimes that purpose is lost due to natural causes.And we sit and rot and feel like our world has ended. What if there’s no one purpose in life? What if purpose is something that we create in different areas of our lives, in different stages of our being.

What if your real purpose is something you only find when you have nobody to serve?

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Images from: Cosmos