Watch out for the expiry date

While shopping for groceries, medicines, cosmetics or any other consumable item, we always look out for the expiry date. Sometimes it is written in large bold letter while more often than not it is written in small, unidentifiable print. You have to turn the can around, squint a bit, hold it against the light and there you will find it written as unobtrusively as possible to avoid disfiguring the attractive packaging. So attracted are we by the outer packaging that we often forget to look for the expiry date and when the fruit begins to smell putrid or the medication is ineffective we wonder what went wrong. We just plain forgot to look for the expiry date.Everything comes with a shelf life – whether it is a man made product or a natural occurrence like sunshine or darkness at night. When the sun rises in the morning you know it will end just as you know that nightfall is limited till the next day break. We are not surprised when day follows night so why should we be surprised when things come to an end?

Unfortunately we imagine that things will last forever – especially those things that are nurtured by us. Our frail human egos have us mistakenly believe that what we have created is a masterpiece that will survive the ravages of time. So when they vanish either voluntarily or accidentally, it comes as a shock to us. But time, the proverbial healer makes us understand that what has changed has changed irrevocably and one should be gracious enough to accept change. After all everything comes with an expiry date : if we didn’t look carefully for the expiry date, it doesn’t mean that it won’t expire.

So even if you didn’t see it coming,
even if the end was truly shocking,
accidental or inadvertent,
nothing in this life is eternal
least of all a
relationship.

For relationships are
fleeting
transactional
and transient
with an expiry date
we fail to see.

That alone will explain one of life’s eternal questions – Why did this  happen to me?