Granted, thou art not

We often take a lot of things for granted. Sometimes conciosuly, sometimes not. Nonetheless, it has an effect on at least one other person.

How does one know when you're taking things for granted?

I don't think there's a definite or scientific way to measure this, but I'm pretty sure that you know you're on the limit when you find no opposition from the other side along with a slight lack of willingness. Of course, this would be the ideal point to stop.

But no. Do we ever recognise this stage? For those of you who do, congratulations. You are wasting a talent. (Presumptous lot that you are ;-)). For those of you who do and have the good sense to stop - bravo. You just saved yourself a whole lot of shit-hitting-the-fan.

But for mere mortals like yours truly, things are not just so simple. It just so happens that 11 times out of 10 (no, I can count alright) I take it beyond design limits. I even manage to push it out of the continegency margin that is always available. I must admit, I have done a fairly large number of times in my lifespan till date. I would be termed as what they call a "repeat offender" if it were ever to be a mapped kind of event.

Why am I writing this?

Because I happened to, once again (surprise surprise), screw up!! And, the best part is that I screwed up over 3 years ago, realised what had gone wrong, tried fixing it last year and still managed to bring the whole damn thing to a point of no return. Well, for now at least.

The funny thing here is that I knew this is how it would end, was braced for it and reached an amicable settlement. That does not mean everything will be bright and flowery from then on, but it's a hope that it'll get there sooner than usual.

Confused? Good. Have more questions per moment than the mind can handle? Very good. At least I got closure. (to whatever extent).

Moral of the story: Even though it might not seem like much now, don't take things for granted. The future, un/fortunately, is riddled with change. Change will affect everything.

Moral of the story for me: Exercise restraint no matter how tempting the opportunity may be. You may have to pay more dearly than you think!!

I will not mourn this loss because I accept it as only a stepping stone to something better.