|
In this time where we're planning for the future all the time. Our future. Our kid's future. Future after us (insurance). Maybe we should start early on our new year resolutions as well. You know... making advanced resolutions. More like preface to our actual new year resolutions. Outlines to what we want to achieve in the new year, but not exactly. For the month of november and december we'll try to become that person who can achieve the things we want to achieve in the coming year. After all, its never too late, so its never too early either. And really, now is always a great time to start. :)
There are certain things that remind us of certain other things that may or may not be directly related. Some painting painted by some painter is some other time with some other thought in mind may remind us of some altogether different idea or place or person or event in our own life. Such are memories. Our life that comes to us through things that may not belong to it as much. We all miss people. We all miss times. Those people, those times may never come back. But new ones would. New people. New times. Clinging to the past is never a good idea. Welcoming a change always is. But thinking of past never hurt anybody.... After all, what is life is we keep moving and never look back to realize how far we've come.
Some philosophies ask us to believe that what we want is what we already have. That idea may be interpreted in two ways. Believe we already have it. Which may imply that you stop working towards it, because you believe you already have it. That only leads to illusions.
Or believe we will definitely have it. Which only removes your fear and uncertainty. Interpretations may vary, the idea remains the same. Chase what shall make you happy.
What works for us may not work for someone else. The world is the same for everybody. We just interpret it differently...
(Image : Coversations with God Book 1 - Neale Donald Walsch)
While we're alive we generally don't think about death more than as a final moment to bid goodbye to this world. But what would we do if we knew we were dying in a certain time. Who are the people we wish we had spent more time with? People we want to see before we die. Words we want to say before its too long. Love we want to express. Hate we want to end. Regret we want to dispel.
But if we know the things we are dying to do. Why do we miss them while we still have time for it?
Maybe we should. Maybe now is right time to filter our lives. Keep the best of it. Reach out for those loved ones. Forgive those who upset us. Now. So we can take that forward and not just end there.
 Sometimes we behave in ways we never thought possible. We manage to be polite to somebody we really hate. We are rude to somebody we respect. We fight with people we love. We do things we didn't think we could or things we wish we hadn't. But is all us. Single entity. One.
Do we hate ourselves for the wrong we do? Is regret a solution to anything? We need to accept our mistakes, as a part of our person. My mistake. My fault. I'm sorry. It won't happen again. And if you really do regret, it wouldn't happen again.
But sometimes we repeat mistakes. And we never forgive ourselves for it. Forgiveness is not something that comes from outside. We are forgiven, when we forgive. Others. Ourselves.
Like Salman Rushdie said in his novel The Moor's Last Sigh:
"When a mistake of the heart is revealed as folly, we think of ourselves as fools, and ask our near-and-dear why they failed to save us from ourslves. But that is an enemy against whom no-one can defend us."
What is it that tells us when we end and others begin? Consciousness? Well, it is pretty freaky to think about it. Sometimes we want to be one with others, or some person. We want friends who know us inside out. Someone who knows exactly what we're feeling. People who love us like ourselves. That feeling of wholeness and belonging. And we do achieve it ever so often. But it keeps leaving us...
Why does it have to get lonely when we're so happy?
Maybe its better to reject that desire and not delve into its possibilities. Sometimes we just have to accept the things as they are. Because even if we do live forever, in which case we'll have to see dear ones die. Not so attractive. Life's good. Now. It is.
Do we need to sit a certain way or achieve some unknown silence in order to meditate? Think something in particular? Or nothing at all? What is meditation exactly?
Meditation is the state of mind when the mind is at absolute peace. When the mind is at peace, it is not involved in love, regret, obsession and the like. Is only is. When you try to attain something, your mind starts to wander about somewhere else. When you do not try to attain anything, you have your own body and mind right here. That state, is meditation.
A Zen master would say, "Kill the Buddha!" Kill the Buddha if the Buddha exists somewhere else. Kill the Buddha, because you should resume your own Buddha nature."
Ayn Rand wrote a book called The Fountainhead. Its so appealing and so readily applicable. Some people hate it, some hate it. But everybody who knows of it, reacts to it. Its very important for any product to be worth discussing. Worth hating. Worth loving. T he Fountainhead is one of those.
Perfection is an idea which means different things to different people and keeping it as individualistic it is, Fountainhead presents a view of perfection that is very interesting. The person who loves himself. We all do. That is why we don't want ourselves to die, right? We love ourselves. We protect ourselves from others. We choose ourselves over others. Its only human. And that is all Ayn Rand is really talking about. First and last love - self love.
Some people think that the philosophy of Ayn Rand (Objectivism) is too selfish and thus, unreasonable. But being selfish only about being happy. Not in the sense of hating/hurting others. In fact in many cases she has portrayed that the alternative to hate, ignorance. Ignore what you can hate, its so much better, focus on the good. Is that mutually exclusive form of self love really bad?
"I care about myself. I'll do anything to be happy. Though I wouldn't kill for it. Coz I'm just not crazy."
Sounds perfectly normal to me. And actually, doesn't seem like anything too profound. Its really natural instinct.
Talking of the book, most people find it difficult to read in one go. But anybody who is through with the first 100 or 150 pages, would finish it. Somebody who drops it before those 100-150 pages, is really making a big mistake.
Do read it. And you don't have to be Howard Roark. That's exactly what Ms. Rand is asking you not to do. Be yourself. Enjoy.
Sometimes we try and try and fail and then suddenly we stop trying and we get it right. Patience? Nay. We run, the goal starts running too (away from us). We can only chase anything in such a way that it doesn't know its caught, till after it has been. Play it smart.
Chase. Its fun.
If you love someone, you want them to be there more and more and more. Doesn't make sense, but you want it so. You want to tell them about everything. You want them to tell you everything. And you want to giggle together. And you want to do that all the time with everything.
That is a nice test actually. If you don't think of that certain somebody when they are not around (thinking anything or nothing in particular but about them) then there's something missing. You need to work harder. Work at it together. Or work at something else together. Togetherness brings people together. You may love someone who's very different from you. But sometimes, we just want our loved ones to share the excitement that the too-different people don't relate to. The joys of everyday life. Like couples can cook together. Or evening walks. Paint. Music lessons. The simple things are really most pleasant. And they work. In human relationships, they work.
We all have done it. Thinking we're so smart we can fool god. And it just never happens? We really can't fool him, or ourselves.
Well sometimes we can. That is because god is really on our side. But yaa...he doesn't have a voice. He can hint us. By what we can only call instinct or inner voice, maybe. But its there. The thing that lets us know right from wrong. And we just know.
We know if we're in a position to pass a test, before we take the test. Mostly, we just know. Only in sometimes it happens that we're so wrong about judging our preparation level.
We know if we can trust somebody or if we can't.
We know if somebody is going to be there when we need them or if they aren't.
But still we take chances. Hoping for surprises. Hoping for luck. That is our trust in god. That is faith. Faith in god. Faith in our luck. Faith in ourselves.
Omens guide you to your destiny. Maybe. But if you keep ignoring them, after some time, they'll stop trying to hint you.
There is nothing called try try till you succeed. Sooner or later, it is the right time to give up. Some things can't happen. Or they just can't happen when you want them to. Its the same thing. Justice delayed is justice denied, right? Sometimes even if you give your life to save someone, he'll still feel maybe it was your duty or he deserved it or no-big-deal. Its not cruel. Its perspective. Perspective for one and failure for another(to have his affection understood). Still no good and bad. Just perspective. Happens. Move on. Find the thing that will respond. Where you can succeed. When you want to. Thats life.
How good is it to depend on others for making decisions? Suggestions is one thing. Advice is another. And plain dependence is altogether different. There are always pros and cons to everything. Is it ok to let others make our decisions for us? Does it really matter who makes the decisions as long as they're right (if they are)?
Any body who makes his own decisions in life would tell you of the confidence that it gives you. To take the responsibility for your actions. Its important. If you don't feel responsible for anything you do. You won't feel responsible for the bad you do and will skip from guilt of it. Also, you won't feel responsible for the good you do and miss the exaltation of it. No negative. No positive. Blank. Stagnation. Waste. Half way through. Half a life.
Estha had always been a quiet child, so no one could pinpoint with any degree of accuracy exactly when (the year, if not the month or day) he had stopped talking. Stopped talking altogether, that is. The fact is that there wasn't an 'exactly when'. It had been a gradual winding down and closing shop. A barely noticeable quietening. As though he had simply run out of conversation and had nothing left to say. Yet Estha's silence was never awkward. Never intrusive. Never noisy. It wasn't an accusing, protesting silence as much as a sort of aestivation, a dormancy, the psychological equivalant of what lungfish do to get themselves through the dry season, except that in Estha's case the dry season looked as thought it would last for ever.
Over time he had acquired the ability to blend into the background of wherever he was - into bookshelves, gardens, curtains, doorsways, streets - to appear inanimate, almost invisible to the untrained eye. It usually took strangers a while to notice him even when they were in the same room with him. It took them even longer to notice that he never spoke. Some never noticed him at all.
Estha occupied very little space in the world.
Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms. It rocked him to the rythm of an ancient, foetal heartbeat. It sent its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull, hoovering the knolls and dells of his memory, dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue. It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. Unspeakable. Numb. And to an observer therefore, perhaps barely there. Slowly, over the years, Estha withdrew from the world. He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him and squirted its inky tranquilizer on his past. Gradually the reason for his silence was hidden away, entombed somewhere deep in the soothing folds of the fact of it.
(God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, Winner of the 1997 Booker Prize)
"Hatred" is a very strong emotion. We can only hate what has seriously let us down. Only those things can let us down from which we expected big time. We expect big time from people/things we think are capable of big time. That's definitely not a negative thing. We can't feel strongly about something we don't care about.
We can hate somebody for not being good. That's because we think they are capable of it.
Competition makes us stronger by keeping us alert. On-the-go all-the-time. That, in a way, is a very good thing. So we don't necessarily hate a competitor.
But some people do hate us. Out to destroy whatever is pleasure to us. They're plain jealous. They think we'll have it so they're ignoring their chance to success in life and diverting all their efforts and time into our failure.
There are always people who hate us. For whatever reasons. Mostly its jealously. Sometimes its intimidation. But not a third thing.
Of course there are other similar things people can feel for others - loathing? and disgust maybe...but they are different from hatred.
|
|
|
|
