Where did it go

the bluish color of the sky when it was sunny, the orange sunset?

The breeze at 5 p.m. when you’re running around,

the vivid green color in the textbook,

the pinkish dress of your favorite actress,

even the smell after it rained,

the feeling of doing things,

the excitement in talking to people?

Did I use my lens so much that colors are fading in my sight?

Does my body feel no wind anymore?

Is pink just another color now?

Did I grow too tall for my nose to be close enough to smell the road?

People—they exist everywhere.

Did I stop finding anything about anyone interesting?

Is it that when you grow up, you lose interest in everything,

or is it that when you were a child,

the fraction of time when you felt things was higher compared to your total life,

but now that fraction has become smaller as you’ve already lived through things?

Mathematically, if you saw a sunset for an hour as a two-year-old,

that was one part of 17,520 parts of life.

And now, if you see a sunset for an hour,

it is one part of 1,57,680 parts.

Of course it made more sense then.

Visually, an ant in an apple bothers you;

the one in a basketball doesn’t.

If you have seen six shades of purple, one shade fascinates you.

If you have seen seven hundred, they mean nothing at all.

Even the two shades of blue in MS- Paint seem so vivid when you’re eight years old

the moment you discover the color spectrum bar and use it for four days,

it no longer fascinates you.

This is why life loses color as you grow.

The colors are there

you just can’t notice them anymore.

They blend into the background of knowing too much.

The heart stops gasping at what the mind can already predict.

And the more you know, the harder it becomes to feel.

The first time your teacher praises you, it feels like sunlight;

the tenth time, it feels like routine.

The first few trips to your hometown feel infinite;

the sixth time, they feel like déjà vu.

We measure life not in years, but in firsts.

And maybe, one day, you’ll look back

and still feel the ache of these firsts and the new ones,

the tears, the colors you thought were gone,

and you’ll let yourself understand 

just how mathematical life really is.