Swifts fly high above us, across the clear sky. You look up once, and you see dots in the sky, fidgeting. But when you are young and believe you have all the time in the world, you lie there, with a jacket propped up as a pillow and friends by your side. You keep staring as the dots turn into little swifts, as free as you, tottering about. Is there any further ecstasy than that of seeing swifts in the dusk and feeling bliss in your veins, I wonder. We wait for the sun to set. But all the times we have come up here and waited for the sun to set, it has alluded us. Hiding away behind the smog and sulfur of the buzzing city, not so far away.

There is a strange comfort in being kilometers away from the place you call home and yet feeling like you belong there, in the moment. Isn’t life all about finding the right places to be belonged to at each moment? Isn’t every ounce of human brilliance, every invention, every novella, born only because it was created right there and then, where it was born? Then aren’t those souls lost who never venture enough to know there could be places and things and people they could belong to, beyond what is familiar? Does happiness in complacence mean ultimate satisfaction? Maybe it’s just ignorance of the possibility that actual happiness may lie somewhere else, although not straightforward to attain, although the path has risks and heartbreaks.

If so, I wish I never be that. Never be afraid to take the leap of faith to find something or someplace new, in pursuit of happiness, of the place I belong to in that exact moment. I’d rather always be the tottering swift with alluding sunsets to look forward to.

<Originally published at Muffled>