Chasing (away) your dreams????

Have you noticed how when you are waiting for something - a bus, a call, an email - time just slows down? You keep checking your watch and the damn hands just don't move!! But at the same time, if you are not watching, the same time just flies??

You are constantly watching your money, cringing with every rupee flowing out, and it feels like the outflow JUST doesn't stop - you never have enough!! But spend with abandon, and for some weird reason, you have all the money you want (now, let's not talk about savings and the future and ruin this moment please ;) )

You love someone and you wait for the person to love you back, call you - it just doesn't seem to happen, and you feel like all you are doing is waiting. Just give up on the wait, and VOILA You just did the frog to princess transformation, and the prince(s) line up for just you.

And I wonder, just WHY do we 'chase our dreams'????

To think or not to think

I bear the cross of thinking too much - among others. Anything I read, anything I see, it sets me thinking. And then I drift into lands that I haven't been to, and sometimes to lands that I shouldn't go to. 

I was trying to study this morning, and I found that every theory I read about, I ended up spending more time thinking about it than I have, reading it. 

And then I paused my thought processes. To think. 

I spin reams out of the present that takes me into so many different worlds. Sedate theories on property rights makes me wonder if and how it might still work when transposed on a completely different plane - of say emotions. By giving communal rights to my emotional "property', will I be subjecting it to the tragedy of commons. And if yes, should I be so heartless as to restrict access by imposing private property rights. And if I do that, what will it translate to? Will I then only allow me to "feel" for a permitted set of "users", and what a sad life that would be. But then, will I not be able to protect myself from hurt due to inconsiderate over use of my 'emotional resource'? 

But the most impacting thought of them all, is that in thinking this way, and this much, how on earth will I be able to study all of the present? Am I not alienating a larger portion of the present from my life by allowing myself to explore? 

Which gets me thinking (but of course ;)) does thinking hinder or help your learning/progress/growth? Did the study of economics I undertook this morning (and abandoned midway) help me learn and grow, or did I fail in my attempt to progress?

What if it were me?

We were discussing the rape victim in Delhi and wondering what we can do about it. Do we have to wait for it to happen to us before we did something? "And if did happen, what would we be able to do then?", you asked.

Interesting question that triggered a whole chain of thoughts.

If it were not that girl, if it were me, in a less grievous condition, what would I do? Would I even seek medical help? Or would I go back and lick my wounds in private killing myself doubly by saying it was my fault - my fault for hailing a bus that late at night, my fault for all that bravado, my fault for not leaving early - the list can go on.

If I did have to seek medical help, what would I tell that doctor? What would I have to go through in terms of paperwork? What questions would they ask? What if everybody else got to know, what would they think of me? How would I handle the pity or even worse, the eyes that screamed out "all your fault - you should have been careful"

How long would it take for my wounds to heal? How long before I will be able to heal inside? Would I be sitting there wishing I would have died instead?

Or would I have fought? I don't know.

A flight of stairs

Sometimes I look at life and I think it is so like a flight of stairs…

There are moments in you life when its all the way up… and it feels like an escalator where you go floating up - higher with every step of the way… where nothing but good happens to you… and you feel so nice and high… high on life.

And then there are these moments when you are at step one and u have a slump – and you go down one step… only to find that there are these series of steps that you must take down to eternity.

Why does life have to be so unidirectional… why cant it have a nice healthy mix of good and bad times, each balancing the other.(and these are thoughts only when you are trudging DOWN the steps, never when u are floating up on the escalator)

But then, on a serious note, look at it this way – the key word here is direction. If we did keep going one step up and then one step down again and again, we would, at the end of the day, have been stationary – we wouldn’t have moved/achieved anything, anywhere. One has to trudge those few steps – up or down – to reach that landing area, from which the steps start all over again – only, from the landing its can go either ways – up or down. One just has to wait and watch – wait to reach up to the landing – uncertain of what lies ahead.


Plus like one wise (?) one had once told me – it’s a matter of perspective – the sum total of the results of your actions – just a set of circumstances that are the reason why things are the way things are.

Lets walk together

Haath thaam chalna ho
To dono haath baayen sang kaise
Ek daayan hoga - ek baayan hoga
Thaam lo, haath thaam lo - chalna sang, thaam lo.

The first time..

Have you ever noticed that a lot of us, when we do something for the first time, we don't really DO it?

You spend all your energies trying to figure out what comes next that you forget to enjoy what's going on now - in the present. The first time you read a book, you meet a person, you sip a new flavour of coffee - it's all just so soulless. All you do is try to impress - impress the other person, impress yourself, your intelligence in having known more - seen more - to have anticipated all; and thereby re-emphasising your own superiority.

It's all a game - a game of guessing and winning by one of the parties involved.

I wonder why we do that. Why can't we just allow our soul to get more involved in the present that our ego does?

A short story

She was on the beach with her father, and he asked her to go and see what the temperature of the water was like. She was 5 years old and glad to be able to help. She went to the water's edge and dipped her toe.

"I put my feet in and it's cold, " she told him

Her father picked her up and carried her down to the water again, and without warning threw her in. She was shocked at first and then laughed out loud at the trick he played.

"How's the water?" asked her father.

"It's Lovely!" she replied.

"Right! From now on, whenever you want to find an out about something, plunge straight in".


(extracted from a Paulo Coelho book)