Through a haze

Striking the equlibrium between caring and not caring is a difficult thing to do. Take family for instance. Caring for them is what one would like to do without caring for the opinion they have on one's life. It is a tough order to fill but I have come to believe that it's possible. The care in question becomes detached to a certain degree as one's own ideas and solutions are the only ones relied upon. It is sort of like a toddler letting go of a grip and wobbling ahead on its own two feet. The initial phase is a tad scary as reliance on people is already a way of life. But as time wears on, one realises that detachment is not so bad. Being in a bubble beats being in the crowd!

So, one day the princess woke up to find that her hair had started to grey and her skin looked like wrinkled paper. She walked to the mirror and gasped: "Where have all the years gone?" She had no recollection. Just fleeting moments from her past were all that remained in her memory. She felt utterly despondent and sat down to decide what to do. Her lady-in-waiting walked in on her, lost deep in thought. On hearing what troubled the princess she suggested getting the Country Witch to prepare a potion to reverse the years. The princess kept thinking. At dinner, she brought up the subject with the father. He laughed and suggested that she ought to take a holiday to forget her worries. But, the princess kept thinking. The next morning on waking from a troubled sleep she went for a stroll in the gardens. The elderly gardener was pruning the hedges to look like waves. He bowed and greeted her and couldn't help asking: "Is something the matter, my lady?" The prin...