Mehndi

If you know me well enough, you know that patience is something that has only recently entered my life. It took me 16 years to appreciate what a slow life might look like. To sit outside with my cup of tea and journal. To take in all of the moments I have by myself. But most importantly, to let life take its course… que sera, sera (what will be, will be).

I’m not Indian but many of my closest friends are. Over the years, they have immersed me in their culture and I am forever grateful for all that they’ve given me.  Diya introduced me to what a good cha is and Anika taught me how to do henna. Now, my favorite thing to do in my free time is do henna and drink cha, and what a good life it is.

Henna has taught me many things but there’s one thing that I can appreciate the most: patience. Thinking back to freshman year when Anika first started to teach me how to do henna, I used to get extremely frustrated. My hand would twitch or my artistic vision didn’t work the way I wanted it to, and it was difficult. I was disappointed. I had built up an idea of how my henna would look in my head and was let down by the results. Henna is one of those things that follows the rule of “practice makes perfect.” I’m nowhere near perfect at it. I still mess up, and sometimes it doesn’t look the way I hoped it would. The difference now is that I’m able to take a breath, wipe off my mistake, and start over again. Henna stains. If I don’t wipe it off quickly enough, a very faint mark of where the paste used to be will linger, but that’s the beauty in it, a beauty I only learned to appreciate recently. Mistakes are the lessons that fuel our futures, and they usually aren’t deciding factors for the rest of our lives. The faint errors will never outshine the perseverance and dedication that lies on the surface, and that stained darker.

Diya told me that she has never seen me more unbothered than in the situations that I have dealt with throughout the past year. That is because I now know that no matter what happens, the misfortune and the struggles, with time, life will bring me back onto the right course. To be patient and let my legacy stain darker than my mistakes. That is what is important.

Thank you, Diya and Anika. I love you both.

Best,

Eila