The Spectator

He was a spectator.
He loved watching the game of life as it played, enjoying the skill displayed by its players. The strategies they implemented, swift and subtle, slow and deliberate. The cut and thrust of the action while seeing it all from a distance .

In the field of arts or sport, the line between the spectator and the player is clearly defined, but in the game of life the same is often blurred... He though could see it very clearly, almost crystal and would wonder why others could not. He kept his position.

Some people are born to the game and seek it, some have it thrust upon them not out of choice but circumstances while some reluctantly join it out of sheer frustration of the game not being played well. He belonged to this category. He had liked to watch but only when the game was played right, with those special skills that makes it a glorious spectator sport.

A passive spectator he never was and would never be. Like it or not one does get involved. So did he. He found himself in the ring of play, the first time, almost nudged by his will, and this did not stop with that one instance but happened time and again.

To his wonder he found he could play, was playing and playing it well. Now he had spectators who enjoyed his play. This became clear from the fact that his moves were cheered, his victories lauded and even when he stumbled he got support.

The rules of the game changed for him. Now he was a player and not a spectator. When the game threw curved deliveries, he parried them and deep inside he knew that he had grown; grown to play better, unafraid and bold. Like sport, life too plays differently for players and spectators.

It struck him now, on how far had he come and the closing lines of the Robert Frost poem came to him “Two roads diverged into the wood and I took the one less traveled by and it has made all the difference”