Pebbles or Peaks So the other day I asked my ten year old cousin which maths chapter he hated the most, He paused, thought hard, flipped through the mental pages And answered with a sigh, Mixed fractions. I laughed, not at him, but at the strange way of how life repeats itself. I am burdened with integration, drawing S like symbols all over my notebook And he was lost in the alleys of halves and quarters. I asked him, “kyun nahi pasand mixed fraction?” And he answered innocently, “didi kuch samajh hi nahi aata”. That is when I was hit by the realisation, a time in my life, when these fractions looked like a tough room to escape, And the word ”simplify”, Was anything but simple. What now feels effortless to me , Once felt like the end of my world, And what feels impossible for him today, Will soon become his stepping stone without him even realising it. So no, I didn’t tell him that it was easy, For the meaning of difficulty changes with the bearer of it. The problem with us humans is that We live either in regret or anticipation, But never in the moment. It’s important for us to realise That today we stand far beyond those hurdles, The ones which felt impossible to overcome. And maybe that’s the beauty of life, to live each moment, unaware if it is the beginning of something, the middle of everything, or the end of it all. -vedika Platforms:🌐 ngoaquaterra.com | shikshaq.in📲 Instagram: @ngo.aquaterra | @roots.aquaterra | @ventures.aquaterra | @shikshaq.in💼 LinkedIn: NGO AquaTerra