On a bureau in our homes, we display photographs of moments we consider important. Birthdays, graduation day, weddings and holidays. We tend to shape our lives around these milestones. As a society we have decided that happiness lies in crossing a series of milestones. Education, job, marriage and kids. Even though these pivotal decisions bring us pleasure from time to time, everything that we desire also becomes part of what we alternately detest. Most people discourage others from their field of work by citing the difficulties they encountered. Many wish they had picked another career. There isn’t a couple who hasn’t fought bitterly or a parent who hasn’t been told that they should have parented more astutely. At intermittent phases we find ourselves staring into space ruminating on how we could have acted differently to have facilitated a better relationship with a spouse or child. We often question the choices that brought us to that hopeless point even though a retrospective look at circumstances is a futile exercise. It’s the difficulty of the moment that motivates our behaviour. Once it has passed, it has lost its power and hence a situation obviously looks easier when we look back. Besides, we are all complicated and mysterious. We barely understand our own actions, yet we are supposed to understand the needs of another individual. It’s only natural that there would be a clash in temperament, ideology, moral values and expectation.

What saves us from this rather intense milieu is the in-between. Regardless of the lack of job satisfaction we may have, we enjoy the feeling of independence a salary gives. Also, it’s nice to stand at a social gathering and tell people about yourself. You don’t have to be the best or the most renowned. You just have to be something; a journalist, a writer, a painter, a doctor. It gives you a sense of accomplishment even if it didn’t reach the heights you hoped or worked towards. It fills the spaces in a conversation as you explain what you know, how you do it and what led you to it. Similarly, we forget the large gaps we are unable to bridge in our family life when we come home from a wedding and laugh over a drunk relative. All regrets are forgotten on afternoons we spend watching movies or shopping for stuff we don’t really need. There are happy times when we take the children for ice-cream treats or indulgent times when we write notes for a sick leave because they desperately need a break from their school routine. There are leisurely summer afternoons to spend swimming with them or buying books to open their little minds. There are also moments of lying idly in bed and laughing over this that and the other that don’t make any milestone moments. Yet, inconsequential though those moments may be, they override the larger implications of a weighty choice you made long ago.

For those who choose not to marry or have children, the world remains an oyster. They are free from the burden of making another person’s life work, of accumulating everyone’s desires and of limiting their own potential by fitting into a mould. For all the times that they may squirm when asked why they chose to remain single, they ought to remember that it has left them free to enjoy their morning tea without someone else’s moods affecting their peace. Being childless also allows you to distribute your time and wealth to charity if you so wish.

A lot is said about the memories that cross your mind in the final minutes of your life. I don’t think that the photographs on the bureau are going to make it to mine. I value the in-between. The experience of living has left a kaleidoscope of images in my head that merge and change before I can hold on to a few. They range from the grey waves of the Arabian Sea to the peachy pink of September sunsets, from laughter during lunch recess in school to experiencing motherhood. There is the satisfaction of having had everyday conversations with my family members where nothing important was said but where everything I said was important to them. There are friends who propped me up when I was low and staff members who looked after my daily routine. So that I can sit and write these articles, dressed in my most ordinary t-shirt and track pants and express that either everything counts or then nothing does. Yes, I made choices and adhered to most of them but marrying and having children or writing and publishing books, all gave me immense stress as well. Hence, it didn’t matter what major choice I would have made because what got me through was what I took from it. Give or take a few changes, I suppose it would have all been nearly the same.  In the end you don’t remember what you achieved. You remember only what you enjoyed.