Compass of the Heart

Compass of the Heart

Whenever I think back of my childhood, I feel lucky that I grew up in a small town. Childhood is so important because so much of one's character is built during that period. When we become adults, somehow we all end up living in big sterile cities devoid of the simple pleasures that some of us as children were fortunate enough to have experienced.

But every generation laments an era that is no more; and what's gone always seem better in retrospect. I try not to indulge too much in nostalgia because it can easily become a form of escapism. But I recognize that the past contains such a wealth of memories which I can tap for inspiration to face the future. A few lines from William Wordsworth comes to mind:

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;

What gives me the enthusiasm to continue gaining new experiences in life is the thought that everything I do now will become a source of further strength for me in the future. The storehouse of beautiful memories can only increase with compounding interests.

What I choose to pursue must also reflect what I am genuinely interested in and not something that I do to keep up with the Joneses or what others think should be the way to live life. That way my life is a unique expression of what I am. To be able to do that is to live life authentically because we owe it to ourselves to pursue what we truly believe in, deep down in our hearts.

Everyone of us leads a unique life. We are all fellow travellers whose paths have come to cross momentarily, here on this blog, on this page, on this very sentence. But we will all continue forward, along our individual paths, ever-faithful to the compass of our hearts.