“Count your blessings;
Name them one by one.
Count your blessings;
See what God hath done”
A song reminiscent of my school days, we would line up during the school assembly and often sing it aloud. With no sense of tune then, all that mattered was to finish the prayers and run back to the class. I didn’t really know what blessings meant then, let alone counting them. Perhaps, everything that we learn in school ends up making sense at some point in time during the course of our lives. I for myself, didn’t realise it until I was a quarter of a century old, the right age maybe to be able to realise what blessings actually were, when life hits the pause button and you stoop over to pick up the fallen bits of it, it is then; maybe a realisation dawns in.
At 30, all that I am now doing is still bending over and accumulating the fallen pieces from the jigsaw of what then seemed to be a near perfect tale in the making. Alas! Now, I see; what I hath done.
All my blessings aside, this is now a curse I got to deal with for the rest of life, maybe even longer; certain things continue afterlife too. Law of karma, isn’t it?? But then, bending over to recollect all that I lost in the midst of shaping that near perfect tale had been a near perfect tale in itself, that was a blessing too; in disguise maybe. The stress my soul feels now, the strain upon my spirit isn’t just ordinary, it’s my emancipation.
The teen who would sing the hymn and rush back to his class now sees the greater meaning attached to it, the significance of all that ‘He’ hath done, the purpose though remains insignificant as it were wasted, all that: I hath done !!
The song’s playing again in the background, all of it now making sense, all the blessings bestowed upon me, all of it making me see through the hazy prism of life: the load upon my soul does feel light. I look above, the sky is hazy too: a subtle hints from the heavens above; that’s life perhaps, shades of grey. Not black, yet not totally white too. Enough of me looking up, let me now stoop over and get going, fallen pieces all over.
Done – Undone, any of it can’t be redone; all that is now left is for me to name by blessings. Alas! I remember just one.
While the blessings keep counting themselves, I stoop over to gather the pieces of the tale that seemed so very perfect. Imperfect – Perfect, all assimilating in one, the blessings and the curse?? All but one. See, what God hath done.
“So amid the conflict, whether great or small,
Do not be discouraged; God is over all.
Count your many blessings; angels will attend,
Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end.”
(Starting and ending lines from the song: Count your blessings, by Johnson Oatman Jr)
P.S: No sight of the angel though, the sky’s hazy.
abhishek purkayastha 