It was the season of spring; year I don’t recall. I was driving out of my office in the evening. Just a normal day? Not quite. Things were breaking left and right at work. Deadline fast approaching, priority issue not trending to be resolved, debug dragging beyond expected timeline, questions and pressure from the upper management. Things getting stressful. Why am I not able to resolve this? What is it that I am missing? Is it a different approach that’s needed? Or should I just come back with a fresh state of mind to be more effective? Am I not looking in the right direction? Is it a technical blind spot? Is it time to ask for help? Is it merely about getting to a point of clarity which is getting drowned in all the noise?

As I drive towards the exit of the office campus, boom, in an instant it felt like time was slowing down. Something so obvious that I could not possibly miss. Something in a whoosh completely hijacked my attention. An overt reminder from mother nature that pulled me out of my train of thoughts (or train wreck rather?). Right next to me was an entire row of trees with lush pink white spring blossoms. A visual so alluring that you cannot possibly overlook – the metamorphosis of something dead and barren in dry cold weather to something so full of life just with a few warm rays of sun. Maybe they call it spring because natures springs back to life at this time? What is it about this time of the year? Are those just rays of sunshine that breathe life? Or are they rays of hope that reward the perseverance of these trees? The hope the trees had that life gets better and beautiful if you survive another day? The hope that the rough cold days are over? Bright white and mild pink the blossoms, a reminder that the reward for your patience is more pleasant than you can ever imagine. Isn’t this visual a real wonder of nature? I could totally get lost in these visuals.

Boss, hold up. Shake off that romanticism, will you? There’s a priority issue unresolved, and you are the one person responsible to close it. You can’t afford to lose yourself in trivial things like trees and blossoms. Your thoughts better get back to the issue at hand. Better come up with a way to solve this for tomorrow. How are these pointless trees and flowers helping you in any way? They don’t even know or care that you exist! Those flowers you see, give it a few weeks and they’ll all die, even the tree wouldn’t need them anymore. Whereas your issue at work, give it a few weeks and that’ll grow into a monstrous tree that looks down upon your inability to get rid of it when it was a tiny sapling. Get real, get your brains working. Can’t waste your thoughts on futile things. What about the delivery of the product? A product that reaches the hands of millions worldwide. What about the expectations that need to be met? What would happen to your career ahead if you can’t deliver it? What would happen to all your dreams and aspirations that are hinging on meeting the expectations at this job? What about your plans for tomorrow, and the day after? These trees and flowers don’t do jack to your goals and ambitions. You are where you are today only because today was the tomorrow that you planned for and worked hard for, yesterday. The future doesn’t simply happen, you’ll have to create it. Only by thinking hard about your future and planning it thoroughly you can get to where you want to be tomorrow.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow! What about the today? What about the now? Eternally drowned in the thoughts of an unseen future, are you even living today or are you merely existing? Are you even experiencing the present? The gift, they say. One day, all of a sudden, there would be no scope for those dreams and ambitions. One fine day your tomorrow ceases to exist, as would you. A day you may never see it coming. Looking back at the thousands of yesterdays, millions of moments, wouldn’t you ever get a sense of regret of not having ever truly lived any of those moments? One day your eyesight stops functioning, would you not have the regret of not soaking up the white-pink beauty of the fresh spring blossoms when you had the chance? The red-yellow splendor of the falling autumn leaves? The vibrant orange hues of the glorious sunset skies? Those blossoms fall away someday; that product you are creating goes out of production someday; your very being of existence reaches the dust someday. Did you soak up the present enough when you had the chance?

Ambivalence. Voices inside the head, both right in their own way. Never-ending angst to create a better tomorrow on one side, awakening realization to appreciate the today on the other. Which one can you choose when both make sense? Which one can you choose when you know you have to make the choice over and over again every single moment?

As the two voices continued the altercation in the background of the mind, I realized that I now reached home. Endless is the debate if I let it continue like this, I figured. I decided that it’s time I call a ceasefire on these voices. I finally resorted to sorting out this chaos like a true adult – by closing the blinds and taking a nap.