‘Nana…how come being happy and making your dreams come true are two different things? Even now, I still don’t know why…”
I once read this manga called Nana and ever since I have read this line, it has been resonating in my mind. We all chase our dreams as if it the end of the world and catastrophe would befall if a time ever came when we didn’t reach them. And yet when we reach our dream, it seems as if it was the most ordinary place to be in the world. The heart didn’t have the satisfaction of making it to the dream. Why is happiness so elusive? Isn’t dreams and happiness supposed to go hand in hand?
A long time ago, when I was a world away, sitting in a foreign cafe seemed such a long stretch of imagination. It seemed like it would be another life, another world, another realm of reality. Yet today sitting in a unknown land, drinking coffee in an small cafe seems too ordinary. It doesn’t feel like I have accomplished something, traveled to something or even made something happen. True, it is but a small part of the big picture of my dream. But shouldn’t there be some happiness in being able to come this far? Why is happiness so very fickle? Is it just the chase then – a hopeless, endless, mindless run to something greater than what we all had in mind? And if that is true, then will I keep running through life in search of that oasis called happiness?
Amar Shobdo 