A difficult lesson to learn.

A time, when you feel hurt on account of the circumstances not entirely in your hands, when the ones you love, you care for unintentionally create and on top of that you feel their pain, is rather taxing. But then this is all part of being alive ! Though I would like to change many things yet again a situation where I can not fix anything but can only change the attitude to look at the scenario that makes it less painful.  It is a difficult lesson to learn but a lesson worth spending your time and energy on !  

Prisoner of my own thoughts

I am amazed at how much it has become important for me to have approval of others for what I do or say ! I did not realise it earlier so clearly that I have become almost a prisoner of my own thoughts initiated by the imaginary reactions of others.  And I can say for sure there would be only a few other such wasteful activities ! In spite of maintaining a strong external shell, the internal state has been quite fluid and messy. The consequences are becoming clear now. Being an advocate to look at life from a bigger perspective, how and where my own view became so narrow for myself is a bit puzzling to me. But then life itself is the biggest school for learning and thankfully you never outgrow it ! Now is the time to pick up a new lesson- to be happy and comfortable in your own skin.

New Year Wish !

 Here is my wish not only for the new year but the year throughout or rather all the times to come- let the life be without boundaries, boundaries of castes, creeds, colours, religions, nations. After all what life is ! Nothing but is just our stay in the transit area between the two doors- Entrance(birth) and Exit(death). Let us spend this time with the feelings of mutual trust, love and compassion, in harmony not only with ourselves but with everything and everyone around. Let us keep the life alive in us.

The shift !

This is one of those times when the whispers in the head have turned into rumblings, may be for good or may be for worse ! Too many thoughts pointing to a direction, different from the one I am on. Whatever it is, looks like, needs to be addressed seriously, since it has displaced the already frail needle of focus. To be or not to be: that is the question(Hamlet, by William Shakespeare) !!! A very difficult situation to be in. Hoping for a miracle to clear the mist :)

Miracles !

I can not say that I do not believe in miracles. They do happen though not always when we want them to happen, but still. Many a times I have wished some miracle to happen in order to survive a situation, I found difficult to handle in my personal life, which, as a matter of fact, have sometimes been granted.  I am sure many of you would also want this miracle to happen- no war, no fight, no killings anywhere on earth. Just the thought of it takes away my sleep and peace of mind and to live under the fear of death and destruction is way too much this short span of life is for ! Misunderstanding, mistrust, ego, greed(probably the biggest cause of problems in the world) is what leads to situations like this in personal and national/international levels. How I wish some miracle happens and lo and behold ! we all change the way we think, the way we live. And the world is a better place to live for you and for me and the entire human race !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzDft0DZRUw 

A journey called life.

I was initiated into these thoughts after we were invited for Shabbat dinner to our friend's (from Isreal) place and we happily obliged them. After seeing the ceremony my exact feelings were- whether you are a hindu, sikh, muslim, christian or a jew or a better way to put it is, if you are a human, you have the same feelings of love, pain, anger, ego, frustration, hate, and fear of failure and unknowns. We, the frail and weak human beings, seek intervention of our respective Gods to help us sail smoothly through the journey of life.


When we arrive in this world we come naked, all we are covered up with is the amniotic fluid from the mother's womb. And there is no difference in that cover for the human species. It is only after the birth that we acquire different identities labeled by name, profession, caste, religion, nationality etc. and all these labels are man made. Convenience of identifying a person in the population of 7+ billions on the basis of some of these distinct labels might be a valid reason to use them. But its time that the idea to use any of them to foster the feelings of divisiveness leading to perception of superiority/inferiority among the masses(as has been the acceptable norm up to now) should be done away with.  The outcome of such an idea has always been the conflicts and unrest in the world.

Isn't it ironical, that in spite of the fact, that our (humans) needs are  same, feelings are same, ways of expression are same still we have so many conflicts amongst us ?  This happens in our day to day life with our friends, colleagues, relations and accumulatively on a much bigger scale as nations. The way we are today, unfortunately, any of these divisions is an acceptable reason to kill or die for !

To understand what, when and where, went wrong that led to this skewed idea of life, is something we should be spending our energies and resources on ! We need to do a lot to get a solution which will fix this  issue. One simple way to start with can be , we live life trying to understand and appreciate this simple fact - life is a journey between the two doors - birth and death, and we all have each other, the fellow human beings  and other living creatures as our companions. The journey for sure would be more pleasant ! And this beautiful desire of John Lennon can become a reality !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwUGSYDKUxU

The Solution !

The title does not refer to any particular situation, according to me this is for most of our problems. In spite of the fact that many of the people I know do not feel as strongly as I do, in favour of this, yet I am convinced this is how it can, it has to and it will work out finally.  Given the basic fact that all living beings are made of same building blocks(quarks and leptons at the moment, to be precise) and the amazing diversity in the living world is just on account of evolution of life depending upon the various conditions, there have to be common solutions. Most of the problems, if not all, are created by one species-humans.  First and foremost we have to realise that being the so called(by us) 'most intelligent' species by no means give us the right to  live life as if the entire planet is in existence for us only.  We have created problems not only for ourselves but for other forms of life. We ought to seek the solutions for the issues together. We deal with various issues on a much smaller level in our personal lives. Here I am concerned about the solutions that come from all of us and have implications on a much larger scale.

The incident which again brought this to my mind is the recent attempt to kill Malala Yousafzai, a fourteen year old girl from Pakistan. If some people think that what she was doing(she just did not want to give up her studies !!!)  was a serious threat to their existence or cause, it just means something went seriously wrong somewhere which led to such a skewed judgement and the action that followed.
I have nothing to do as such with either the victim or the people who attacked, I am a third neutral party or am I? Going by usual reaction to such an incident it would be enough for me to sympathise with the girl and criticise the attackers and forget it. I do not think so. If I believe that a problem is not mine as long as it does not hit me directly or indirectly then this is one of the very short sighted attitude to have. It is just a matter of time till I would be caught in the web(of whose strings have come from many such unrelated incidents).

To come back to the point I feel we all should be accountable for what is wrong. Empathy, compassion, understanding, respect for other's life are a few qualities we need in all of us. Poverty, wars, terrorism etc. are few examples of self inflicted wounds by us and the solution has to come from each of us, it might be in a very remote way, something which has no direct bearing on the issue but unless this happens, consider yourself sitting on a ticking bomb and just wait for your turn !!