What does it take to step off the cliff? What does it feel like to take that wild stride into the great beyond? Is it like that Tom Petty song? Is it truly free falling? Or is it like some great writer’s said in their articles - “Make your lives extraordinary”. They make it sound fun. They make it sound so passionate, so free, it’s almost like the call of a siren so irresistible, the blood thrums through one’s veins

The cliff has always beckoned. My cliff has always been one of those craggy types – something out of a novel (which I have recently read few days back) full of crashing waves, smoky clouds and billowing winds. It’s enticing and oh, so right. It’s strange really. I hit 26 and I know I would step off the cliff one day. And when that day will come I don’t know. Probably because I didn’t take into account my dreams seriously everything is just stopped.

We call it stagnation. It’s ultimate plateau, never ending and infinite. Funny then it gives to restlessness. Restlessness. That nervous tic. It doesn’t allow you to stay in one place, where no place brings peace except when you are travelling. And then, in that motion, that travel, there is a sense of momentum, of doing something where you are moving forward. Atleast at that moment you are moving forward, at a time when nothing else seems to be change. The wheels of autorickshaw then seems to move faster than the stagnant form your life takes. Weird isn’t it, just when you wish things would never change, you wish for change.

But it is difficult to break away from the routine. I have always been a person who likes to be in dreams and believe in herself. I honestly don’t know to be anything else. I was one of those odd children in school who always, very proudly, announced that I would be a engineer. Surrounded by future doctors and engineers of the world. I was the sore thumb. Besides, at 25 the practicalities of life grounded me. Living independently at a rented house,paying every month, buying groceries, cooking food, Bills to pay, travelling, company of strangers. But the call of wild is too alluring. It overpowered the control freak in me. Left me feeling engaged, like I was ignoring the one thing that was the most important for me in my life.

I would like to say that this realisation was the time to follow my dreams (or step off the cliff) whatever you may like to call. And coming in that ultimate romantic fashion – a clash of thunder and searing lightning.

Unfortunately it didn’t. Instead there is pain of soul searching – an exercise that is wrought with ugly truths and rude awakenings. With it, there is a self-doubt, a horrid creature that has a nasty way of digging its claws into me, refusing to let go and set me free. There are many baby steps taken. One forward and five back to my safety net. There is a lot of thinking till my head started paining. Is that I am alone feeling so or someone else. Is this is the life which I wanted?

Still searching for the answers. But change is tough. No one ever said it was easy. If it was easy, we wouldn’t really called change.