The other day, my husband took me out for dinner on the occasion of our anniversary. It was a beautiful restaurant with scented candles, flowers and Buddhistic ambience. Before settling down at the table, my husband took me for a stroll around the restaurant. He had been here before with his colleagues and got impressed with its environment. He had been waiting for a perfect occasion to take me there and he had succeeded by choosing our anniversary date. As we were walking across the place, I noticed an Aquarium right in the middle of the restaurant. It was big! It contained fish of many types and sizes. I was amazed at the thought of placing an Aquarium inside a restaurant. It not only gave a tranquil touch to the area but also descended a fair amount of burden from parents' shoulders. The Aquarium was colorful and animated enough to engage the children. The Restaurant leadership must be dealing with a bunch of naughty children themselves at home to have got such a wonderful idea of Aquarium in the middle of the restaurant, I thought. Like any other child, I too went close to it and was checking each fish. My husband who didn't want to distract my study, ordered a table close by. As we were having our dinner, we were regularly glancing at the Aquarium. He started the conversation "Beautiful Aquarium, isn't it?" I replied "Yes" and added "But..". He noticed it and said "But?" by wrinkling his forehead and narrowing his eyebrows. I then went on to explain my "But" to him.
"Although I liked the under sea exhibition above the ground, I somehow felt sad about it. I never liked caging of animals. Here the cage is glass, though. That glass container has hardly any place for fish to roam around." I paused abruptly as a new thought struck my mind suddenly. I said to my husband "Are we too not like them?". He didn't understand my short yet highly meaningful sentence so responded with a confused look. I continued the conversation by repeating the same statement "Yes, are we too not like them? Caged or glassed in our own world. How are we different from these fish? They are enclosed in a glass chamber and we are enclosed in our boundaries. But, there is a difference. These fish cannot free themselves, they are helpless. We can free ourselves because our boundaries are made mostly by us. We are not helpless like fish." My husband interrupted me by asking "Which boundaries are you talking about?" I understood that I need to elaborate the topic so answered him with a question. "Whats your daily routine?" He started out without even giving a thought from brushing to going to office and then from returning home to sleeping at night. I posed another question "Was there any change in it from past one year?" He now thought a bit and replied "No". I exclaimed "That's what I am talking about. We have been living the same routine for the past one year just like these fish. You wake up, go to office, come back home and then sleep. Now you tell me how different is it from living in an Aquarium? Only thing is that our Aquarium is made of fear instead of glass. We fear to change, we don't skip a bit out of our routine fearing about consequences." After a short break to calm down, I continued again to express what I thought "There is so much out there in life and we are here living each day just the same way. We must feel pity for ourselves before feeling for those fish. We already lived half of our life but still haven't seen at least one quarter of the world. Remember our school days, when we used to read about other countries and wish to fly there to experience them live? When we were children, we planned our future totally in a different way than it is today. You must be thinking that it is all because of time constraint". He nodded his head in acceptance, I continued "But is it really true? Is time that evil? If so, how did you manage to arrange a beautiful evening for us tonight?" His face turned from contemplation to congeniality, he realized that I had a point. So, with a trace of victory I proceeded with my argument. "It is all in our hands. Our routine is in our hands, if we want to break it, we can. We can take a chance to try something new. We can take a break and go on occasional expeditions. No one stops us and nothing hazardous would result from it. We are in our best shape and age to explore. This is the best time. If we do not do it now, I bet we would definitely regret it on our death beds. I don't want to die disheartened. Do you?" I stopped and waited for his answer. Obviously his answer was no. He said "No! I don't want that state. I always wanted to have a learning life since my childhood. As each year passed by, I completely forgot about it. I didn't realize how much I tangled myself in boredom ordinary until you mentioned it today. You are right about one life one chance. We should do it, let's experiment and learn something valuable from it just like what we learnt from these fish today!"
Just when he completed that statement, our dessert had arrived and we toasted to our new bond-free lifestyle.
