Starting Afresh

Perhaps I read this story in Bustaan-e-Saadi. Neither I remember the exact words nor am I able to find the book. It was about a very old person, who on being inquired about his age, replied that he was merely four years old, adding that it has been only four years since meaning of this life has dawned upon him so he had decided to disregard rest of the sixty meaningless years (or something to that effect).

Looking back over the years and the idea of disregarding them in a jiffy seems welcoming, brooding over them does not. So much time has been wasted. Still don’t know and understand a lot many things. Never learnt them and might never get the chance to do so. The vague desire of man to be homo universalis...

It would be nice to move on, start afresh. But what guarantee does one have that ten or twenty years down the road one wouldn’t stumble upon a new meaning, a new horizon. The previous one was just a mirage, another run-of-the-mill trick out of the great magician’s bag. Idols smashed down, and principals torched. Life would be again on the crossroads. Then once again this urge to trample over the bygone years would seethe but it would be the threshold of that troubled, twilight period which Turgenev describes as the one when regrets come to resemble hopes, and hopes are beginning to resemble regrets, when youth is fled and old age is fast approaching. The decision would be much difficult then.