Paulo Coelho

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Your story in my Blog – Spilling and Splashing by Krishna Mohan Menon

Author: Paulo Coelho

Hi,
I remember visiting the pantry car of a train, as a child. In there were two huge steel vessels with boiling water, placed close. As the train moved these would rock violently, spilling and splashing the boiling water around. These would spill water, sometimes on the floor and sometimes into the other, and in the process empting themselves.

I sometimes feel the relationships in youth, be it ours or our parents when they were younger, are in a way like those tumblers in the pantry. The feelings of egoism, anger, jealousy and insecurity boiling within individuals in the relationship; spilling and splashing on each other and creating emptiness in them.

Then during the morning stroll, I saw an old couple who had also come for the walk. They probably had things boiling in them once, but they now seemed at peace, calm and serene. They were like tranquil blue sea water after a stormy night.

The hotel I visited the other day, had a pool by the riverside. From a distance the pool looked commingled with river. But it actually wasn’t that way. These were very close yet respected each other’s space. May be at times few drops from the river would spatter into the pool but that would only add to the vista. The placidness and serenity of the view was similar what I had seen in the old couples.
May be that’s life – you boil initially, spill a bit and splash a little and in the due course learn the art of calming yourself and your relationships.

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