The Old And The Young

On a bench by the lake sat a teenage boy staring longingly at a photo in his hand and snivelling quietly. So lost was he in his own thoughts and in the photo he held that he didn’t even notice when an old man came by and sat down beside him.

“She broke your heart, didn’t she?” The old man asked.
The boy jumped out of his trance and looked at the man with wide blinking eyes.
“This girl-” the old man said, nodding at the photo, “-she left you, right?”
“I’m sorry, Sir,” the boy said, “but I don’t see how that’s any of your business”.
“Oh, it is, it is,” the old man said, “you see, I have gone through this exact same thing, have felt exactly what you’re feeling right now”.
“Whatever,” the boy shrugged, and putting the photo in his pocket cast a quick glance at the man. He seemed flimsy, shrivelled, and weak, with thinning white hair and freckled skin. There was a distant vacant look in his eyes that clearly said that he didn’t have a lot of time left in him.
“Shouldn’t you be resting in bed or something,” the boy couldn’t help but ask.
The old man smiled.
“Let me tell you something,” he said, without looking at the boy but staring straight ahead at the water in the lake, “life is like a maze and you keep going around it in a circle until finally, you reach the end. But sometimes, as you get to the end you realize that you’re back at the same place from which you had started. You see, the end and the beginning of a journey are often the same thing, and therefore inconsequential, it’s what happens during the journey that matters”.
The boy could make no sense of his words and they seemed to him like ramblings of a senile mind.
“You think my age is making me talk nonsense, don’t you?” The old man said, with a smile.
“No, not at all. That wasn’t what I was thinking,” the boy replied, a tad sheepishly.
“It’s okay, I understand the insolence of youth. But what I’m saying comes from that wonderful burden called wisdom that only age can bring. Tell me something, do you know what time is?”
“You mean, what time it is now?” The boy asked, and referred to his watch, “it’s fou-“
“No, no, not the current time. I’m asking, do you know what time is on a whole? The concept of it?”
The boy was at a loss to answer.
“You don’t, right? Because you have never paid any attention to it. It’s like the breeze that’s blowing around you or the soil underneath your feet, they’re essential to your being but you take them for granted and so don’t stop to ponder over them. Let me tell you, time is the most vital component of your life. It’s connotations go far beyond the simple lapses of seconds, minutes, and hours, that you see the clock making. You might think of it as constant and chronological, bound within the twenty-four numbers that we have set for it, but it’s not. It’s dynamic and ever-changing and as it changes, the course of our very existence and the world on a whole change along with it”.

At any other instance, perhaps, the boy might have been fascinated with what the old man was saying but at that moment he was nursing a broken heart and he felt that he could have done without this monologue on physics.

“Your heart has been broken, I can understand,” the old man said, “but this is only a precursor to what’s to come. You’ll have many heartbreaks in your life and you’ll have to find a way to adapt, to get over them and move on, keep your mind open to the prospects of new love because if you don’t, you’ll end up an old guy with nothing and nobody by your side”.
These words sounded ominous to the boy but he also realized that the old man was speaking about his own experience of life and a part of him felt sad for the loneliness that his companion was undoubtedly surrounded by.

‘I’m never going to end up like him,’ the boy thought to himself, ‘I’ll see to it that I don’t’.

“The world is rapidly evolving,” the man continued in his own ruminative tone, “have you ever thought that maybe fifty years from now, this photograph that you have safely tucked in your pocket might be visible to you from a device in your hand? Not only that, but you’ll also get every information that you might need through that very same device and it will also allow you to contact any of your friends within seconds, no matter where they are in the world”.
The boy couldn’t help but let out a little laugh.
“That’s the most impractical thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, still laughing, “contact anybody within seconds? Why, even the telephone takes longer than that to connect you to someone”.
“Tell me something,” the old man said, “do you think that the people who lived, say, three hundred years before ever thought that there will be a thing called the telephone someday through which one could converse with another person despite being miles apart?”
“I suppose not,” the boy said.
“Exactly! Anything that hasn’t been conceived yet seems impractical to us but it only takes one audacious mind to go beyond the limitations of human thought and create something that changes the fabric of our reality forever. Humanity, as a race, is evolving at a frenetic pace, we are going through our biggest transformation yet, and entering a phase in our evolution where technology will be the face of the world we live in, and you must embrace it. You’re young now, you have your whole life ahead of you, don’t let these little trifles of a failed love affair hamper the way you should look at your life and your future. Don’t remain constrained by your past, let your mind flow in whatever direction it wants to go in. Life is a long journey and there will be many obstacles along the way, don’t lose hope at every one of them. Always remember that there will be a tomorrow, that no matter how dark it might seem today, the sun will again rise and the world will keep on turning. You just have to hold on and roll with the changes that come your way. I couldn’t do all of it, couldn’t change with time, and progress with the world. I lagged behind and allowed people to play with my emotions, my ambitions, and my life. I sought the validation of others when all I had to do was look within my own self and realize my own worth. Now, I’m a worthless old man on the cusp of death and the world has moved far ahead and there’s nobody around to hold my hand as my life fades. Don’t make the mistakes I made. Be better than me”.

The boy listened to him with all his attention and though he realized the potency of his words, he also felt that they didn’t apply to him. Yes, his breakup was fresh, his heart was wounded, and he missed her, but he knew that he had it in him to get over it. After all, he was young, good looking, and smart; surely he could do better in life than this miserable old hag.

“Thank you for all your advice, Sir, and those very interesting observations about time and evolution. I’ll admit that you have indeed helped me to take my mind off the pain that I was facing but I think I’m fine now and I’m confident of doing much better in life than you have. You don’t look too well and I seriously think that you should go home and rest”.

With that, the boy got up and began to walk away.
“What a stubborn delusional fool I have always been; never taking anybody’s advice, not even my own,” the old man sighed, as he watched his younger self disappear into the distance.

(c) Niladri Mitra 2020