Making everything better.

Sweetest memories come from mundane everyday activities.

When Saagar and I went for our weekly shopping, he loved to take full charge of steering the trolley around. He wouldn’t want me to touch it. Sometimes I would mistakenly place a hand on it and get a glare from him. Other times I would deliberately touch the trolley with the tip of my little pinky, just to get a reaction from him. I was never disappointed. He obliged. We also had a ritual of rewarding ourselves with a chocolate éclair each, on our way home.

Soon after Day 0, I couldn’t manage to go to that supermarket without a major heart-break. I would stand in front of the bakery section and cry like a school kid with sobs and tissues and both my fists covering my eyes. It didn’t matter who was around. It didn’t matter that I made a spectacle of myself. It just happened.

Today, it didn’t happen. We went there and finished our shopping. We went to the bakery section. Si stood beside me and put his hand on my shoulder as we got our chocolate eclairs. We went to the car-park, stood in the sun and enjoyed our sweet rewards. It felt like Saagar was there. He was there in our hearts and minds.

The Japanese have a word, kaizen. Kai means change and zen means good. Kaizen is based on the philosophical belief of continuous, incremental improvement. It believes that everything can be changed for the better. Nothing is ever seen as a status quo – there are continuous efforts to improve which result in small, often imperceptible, changes over time. These small changes add up to big changes over the longer term.

Getting better at getting better.