Page 9 - My Creative Writing Portfolio

9

IF A CRYSTAL COULD TELL ME EVERYTHING

If there were a crystal that could reveal everything—my past and my future—I often wonder what
I would ask.

First, I would be tempted to ask about my past life, if such a thing exists. Was there a life before
this one? And if so, what kind of person was I? More than that, I would want to know why I was
born in a particular place, to particular parents, at a particular time. Why Nepal? Why my family?
Why that historical moment?

These questions may seem futile. Perhaps they are. Yet they reveal something essential about the
human condition—our choicelessness. We do not choose the coordinates of our birth. We enter
the world already situated: geographically, socially, economically, historically. To ask “why here?”
is to confront the fact that we did not choose at all. And perhaps the deeper lesson hidden in that
question is the need to accept.

When I was young, as I gradually learned about the world beyond Nepal, America appeared as the
symbol of development and possibility. We had, in our imagination, something like an “American
dream.” To go there, to prosper, to live freely, to roam without constraints, to stay in grand hotels
as the American tourists did when they visited our country—these images shaped our youthful
fantasies.

Sometimes I wondered: what if I had been born in America instead of Nepal? What would my life
look like now? Would I think differently? Would my aspirations, habits, and achievements have
taken another direction? But this is a counterfactual question without real substance. One cannot
detach a self from its place of birth and transplant it into another geography as if identity were
luggage. The “I” that asks the question was formed by the very soil it questions. So, in that sense,
the question dissolves.

Now, at sixty-two, I feel differently about such curiosities. The desire to know what might have
been has weakened. When we no longer crave certain material outcomes, those unrealised
possibilities lose their power over us. The “American dream” no longer disturbs my thoughts. It
does not tempt or trouble me as it once did. It belongs to another stage of life.

If I were to consult the crystal today, my question would not be about alternative destinies or lost
possibilities. It would be about the end.

I do not want to know whether I will be wealthy or famous, successful or forgotten. I would want
to know how my final years will unfold. Will I remain physically able—capable of walking, eating,
going to the toilet without assistance? Will I retain clarity of mind? Or will I become dependent,
confined, unable to recognise those around me?

What I fear is not death itself, but prolonged helplessness. I do not wish to exist in a vegetative
state, sustained without awareness or dignity. If the crystal could reveal that future, perhaps I