Ideal, by definition, means perfect. So, a day where everything is exactly how you would like it to be, wouldn’t that be great? I haven’t ever really thought about it. It almost feels pressurising. What if twenty-four hours are not enough? There is so much I want to do, so many places I want to see and so many people I want to meet that I’m scared I might miss out on something but I’m going to make an attempt at penning it down.

I want to start my day by watching the sunrise from the top of a mountain just to feel how close I can be to the sun, to see the rays scatter a little by little and then eventually light up the entire sky but I also want to spend those hours in deep sleep on a hotel room bed while I sink into the mattress. A wild part of me wants to take an early morning walk on the Arouca Bridge which is the largest pedestrian bridge in the world, just to feel the adrenaline rush through my system even though I know I can’t have it all.

Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day. While a part of my South-Indian side wants to eat piping hot Dosa with my father on the kitchen top in our home in Kannur, another part of me wants an entire buffet of home-baked cupcakes and donuts with my mother in our other home in Kolkata but what if I can have both? Then I’ll also want a plate of steamed momos from my college canteen which has been a distant dream for a while.

I do believe in sight seeing but I want to explore what many haven’t already like views that only look beautiful when seen from the right perspective or markets that come to life on busy mornings. Chasing the clouds on a long drive past the beach has always been on my bucket list but oh wait, that should be saved for later because I don’t think there’s anything more beautiful than the way the sun slowly hides behind the waves and forms the prettiest colours in the sky.

I’m not much of a foodie but I’ve pictured myself several times eating a plate of the perfect Aglio olio on the streets of Italy with a glass of wine just by myself. Maybe a conversation with a stranger about life is exactly what everyone desires but it is also important to take yourself out on dates and cherish your own company, to give yourself the happiness we crave for because it comes from nowhere but within.

Now comes one of the most important parts of my day. Meeting some underprivileged children and teaching them a life skill. I know it sounds high and mighty but doing this, teaching children from different parts of the city I live in is the one thing I know I’m doing right. They help me grow and to think that even the tiniest speck of knowledge I impart might help them is so exhilarating.  

Apart from the sunset, I want to spend my evening at a dog park where I’m surrounded with the purest vibes and manage to finish a chapter of Forty Rules of Love which is currently the book I’m reading while sipping my favourite drink.

As much as I do believe in spending quality time with yourself, my friends play a very vital part in my life so a potluck dinner with them at a sleepover, with some horror film that is background noise, is the only way I would want to end my day.

I know I sound absurd, putting together unattainable things and acting over-ambitious but isn’t that what perfect means? To achieve the impossible. I want to spend my day doing different things around the globe because that’s the only way I know how to cramp up all that I want. Could sit and plan out a day with every detail and maybe by some miracle, I might somehow get it all but will it be the best possible thing? I don’t think so because then I’ll want more from my life. We spend so much of our time planning the things we want, to reach goals, dreams and while all of those are good things, we lose sight of where we are now. In this race of constantly catching the next best thing, we lose precious time.

My definition of how I want my day to look like will change, constantly, not because I’m indecisive but because I want a lot of things and what I need is a lot of days for that. My ideal day might be stay-at-home Saturday with my dog, binging a show on Netflix but it might also be Sunday brunch with my family, or Friday evenings with children. Unfortunately, I can’t decide what I want most so I choose to stay still, just where I am and collect the small moments from every day and while some might be difficult to get through, some might just be the adventure I did not plan for.