A friend of mine had a shocking news. It shocked me so much when she told me that I can't quite grasp how much it must have shaken her. The closest person in her life was taken away from her literally overnight, with no warning whatsoever. Just a week ago she and I spoke about meeting for dinner to celebrate my PhD and a week later... her world has transformed in a way she couldn't even have dreamt.

I think to myself how we plan our days, months, years... and how nothing is really in our hands. Though it's never far away from my mind, this shock has again made me realize how futile everything is, how insignificant, how very meaningless... but on the other hand it is perhaps to numb our minds to the futility and inevitability of everything... of marching time for some of us and of the sudden stop for some others... we busy our minds and lives with whatever we find to fill them... with whatever we think will make the most of what we have till we have... for what is the option? There is neither turning back time nor extending it... who is gone is gone and who are left will also be gone... numbing or overcoming or accepting or going on... all these are our only choices...

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A Dream Within a Dream

~Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand —

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep — while I weep!

O God! Can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?