What’s your Patronus?

Pardon me if you came here looking for a quiz or a list of tips on how to find out what animal your Patronus would be. More than ‘what’, this post is about ‘how’ to conjure your Patronus. Take it as a pre-training required before your ‘Defense against the Dark Arts’ class.

Lately, whenever I have had an overwhelming day, I noticed that I tend to exhaust myself by playing montages of all the negative moments of my life on loop till the batteries of my brain dies out.

“Why do I spend precious moments of my life reliving my past, especially the painful bits?”

On one similar day, I was struck by the need to stop this endless spiral to recenter myself. My first thought was “How would you conjure your Patronus? What are the happiest memories you’d rely on to conjure your strongest Patronus?”

I immediately found myself smiling just by the mere recollection of a few of my favourite memories from the past.

“Why haven’t you thought of this before, dimwit? If it’s going to be tapes on loop, might as well be something endearing. Life is too short to watch bad movies, right?”

And there I was, typing down my favourite memories from the past 24 years of my life (on the rare occasion that I do need to conjure my strongest Patronus to save my life and possibly the world, I hope this list comes in handy).

It was the day I realised even recalling positive memories could make me feel like I was physically present in that moment again. It brought back all of my favourite people, feelings, smells, songs and even food.

And I lay there and created my favourite montage ever: It is the day I remember dressing up as a 4-year-old to meet my father who’d been stationed miles away, after ages. It is tricking my mom to feed me when I was young because I didn’t want to grow up. It is those times my cousin and I danced around our huge lawn without a moment’s thought about who might be watching. It is shooting ducks on our TV, my first video game with my brother. It is every time my dad tried to surprise my mom and failed miserably. It is laughing till it hurt a moment after you were fuming at your family during a fight. It is sitting in a restaurant finishing off the menu, laughing incessantly, with two people with the biggest hearts I’ve known. It is walks around my favourite campus. It is running for samosas in between classes with my girlfriends. It is bus rides to college and countless evenings with humans who remain to be my favourites, long after graduation. It is finding a friend who cried with me when I felt like my world was falling apart. It is that friend who ensured I ate and went to bed smiling because she knew I was lying when I said I was okay. It is that person who you share your favourite art with. It is moments of feeling heard, seen and understood by people you’d wished you’d known earlier. It is rediscovering an old friendship. It is the first kiss on the beach. It is waking up to calls from the one you love who just wanted to say “good morning". It is dancing in the shower to your favourite song. It is long journeys with your friend sharing her playlist with you. It is game nights with the loudest and craziest people you’ve ever met. It is friendships that have stood the test of time when I’d begun to believe it was the end. It is strong minds and stronger women who called me beautiful when I did everything to believe I wasn’t. It is gentle hearts and gentler men who assured me I was enough. It is my family that taught me the idea of love and home. It is souls who let me build my second home far away with them. It is moments of laughter, surprise, gratitude and love so large that it left me brimming with tears. It is right now, when I realise that I may have had fight my demons for long, but I have been blessed with far more than I’d ever acknowledged or appreciated.

So today, if you find your mind getting out of control…take a moment.

Breathe in. Conjure your Patronus (like the world depended on it).

Take a step further maybe, if the ones from your memories are still around, thank them for making your Patronus impenetrable.

Gratitude always wins.

“There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy.” — Ralph H. Blum