For Karen

Life is a joke, i would usually hear her say whenever we trace the familiar path leading to the church. It used to be her mantra during our prayer-afternoons after class in college. One of that afternoons, when i thought she would make a pivotal change of point of view about what to her is life, she cried hard. It was the first time I saw her cry. And then i thought maybe she realized life after all is not a joke. I was mistaken. In between tears, she would sob and shortly laugh and utter, ‘See, aren’t all these things a joke?’ I could only stare at her, stunned out of confusion or terror. For about a few seconds I thought she was going insane but she assured me she isn’t as if reading my mind. Then and there she shared that while we struggle in our present life, we could sit still and look back at the past. If our seemingly successful or unvictorious present life is a result of the steps we made back then, stop for a while and laugh. It was a healthy idea. Laugh at what brought us in our current situation. Laugh at our attempts, our cowardice, our accidents, our mistakes. Everything is but a joke. The events of our lives are jokes that are cast one by one. They have been laid out even before you could decipher where they lead you to. So carry on, go with the flow, laugh and live a healthy life! And oh, one of my life’s jokes is meeting Karen.