Unchanging Days

In the last five years of being together, have things really been monotonous? Absolutely not. We’ve had countless moments—some joyful, some exhausting, some life-altering—that could never be called dull. Yes, the last two weeks were slow. But five years? They’ve been a storm.

Maybe—just maybe—these two weeks were what we needed. A pause. A breath before the next climb.

Because here’s the truth:
We have lived through a pandemic.
We have faced 2 big losses—raw and heartbreaking.
We’ve seen two broken hip fractures.
A craniotomy.
We’ve lost a car to the Chennai floods—watching something that carried so many of our memories sink under water like it never existed.
Cancer came uninvited and shook us.
And oh, my endless job changes—sometimes out of choice, sometimes out of sheer survival.

But that’s only half the story.

Here’s the other half, the one we forgot to count:
We’ve wandered across continents—from Japan to Africa—collecting landscapes, accents, and little pieces of cultures that now live in our hearts.
We’ve seen five different countries.
We’ve celebrated the birth of a new life—the magic of someone’s first breath.
We’ve watched four tiny pups grow into the most adorable, full-of-attitude babies who now rule the house.
We bought our first car—what a feeling that was, a piece of adulthood we claimed with pride.
We grew closer to family in ways we never imagined—through both grief and joy.
We’ve seen my niece transform from a chubby little ball of giggles and noise into a chatterbox who now tells us what to do.
Our younger cousin—the one who once was too small to fit into my school uniform—is getting married. Still feels surreal. One day she was chasing the house for toys, she broke into a conch like cry, and now she’s walking into a new life, as a woman.
And that other cousin—the little fat one who would sit on a tricycle, mumbling all our names in the squeakiest voice possible in the living room with dirt on his face—is now working in movies, rubbing shoulders with stars, living in the glare of lights and cameras. Grown up, and yet in my head, the kid who would get angry at anything and everything and sit in a corner. 

And all of this—every heartbreak, every joy—has unfolded in the same small orbit we call home.

So why do we call life monotonous? Because two weeks were quiet?

Because the house was still and healing? Maybe we forget that slowness isn’t emptiness—it’s restoration. Sometimes life isn’t asking us to rush; it’s asking us to breathe.

Someone once told me, “Life after 30 is hard, not because you’re aging, but because everyone around you is.” I didn’t understand it then. Now I do. Adulting doesn’t hit all at once—it creeps in quietly. Through parents aging alongside you. Through responsibilities that stretch beyond yourself. Through roles you never thought you’d have to play so soon.

But here’s what I’ve learned: just because things feel slow now doesn’t mean life has stopped. It means life is balancing itself. The storms of yesterday demand the stillness of today. And that stillness? It’s not punishment—it’s preparation.

My mom always said, “God gives you things when He knows you can handle them.” I never quite understood that either. I always assumed it was about the bad—the trials and the heartbreaks. But now I think it’s about the good too. We just notice the storms because they scar. We rarely pause to honor the sunshine while it’s warm on our skin.

Life is a strange curve, isn’t it? You rise, you fall, you rise again. Sometimes you plummet so far you wonder if the climb is even possible. But every fall is proof that we still have the strength to stand. That somewhere inside us, there is resilience waiting quietly to be called upon.

So, when life feels monotonous, maybe it’s not monotony at all. Maybe it’s mercy. Maybe it’s a gentle hand on your shoulder whispering, “Rest. The next chapter will need you whole.”

Because life will always throw its curveballs. But the game is still ours to play.