Bloom!

I love flowers for they make me feel so positive and hopeful about life! However, one uncivic thing that irritates me no bounds is our habit of plucking them. Today morning only I saw an elderly lady filling her entire 'puja thali' with various flowers. I felt like  telling her to stop but that would have resulted in a good quarrel and it would have been precocious on my part as well. 

Nature has produced them for a purpose, useless plucking must be discouraged right from an early age. This is what I feel and I am proud to say that I pluck flowers  very rarely, once in a blue moon that too when it becomes inevitable for the purpose.

Medium: Pencil Colours

whats your WHY???

Today just like that, I was struck on a point that got me pondering. What should be the most important premises on which a life should be based? I feel they are following two things:

One is a vision, a purpose to live for. Clinging onto a hope gives us a direction to go towards, and makes us sail easily. In the words of the philosopher Fredrick Nitzche “He who has a why can cope up with any how”. I strongly believe in this thing. Rhonda Byrne (author of the best-seller ‘The Secret’) also stresses on the same point, although she as assigned a different term for this- she calls this the Law of Attraction. She says that if you aspire for something and cling to a hope, it comes true primarily because of the positive energy. But here I mean one must have a reason to live, a clearly defined ‘why’.

The other one I feel is a positive frame of mind. If one is depressed or is a pessimist he will definitely be in a constant search for a shoulder to cry upon and such a mental state of people can be used to some unscrupulous advantage by others. A fearful mind is vulnerable to problems. On the other side, a positive and open mind is receptive to new ideas and can handle new situations easily.

Well, I don’t wish to be didactic but these are just my random thoughts.

DON’T FEED THE DEVIL

Well I felt my usual urge to write again, this time not about something I observed someone doing but about many long chats I have with my close friend. Lately we have been talking a lot about various dimensions of life, our existence and motives, character and other related things. I would say some philosophical talks on observing the life a little deeply (at our level best).

We were one day talking about how we keep on thinking about things we hate, ignoring those we like and care for. If we analyze our thoughts for a day, we will find that most of the time we crib and crib about petty things of past like a nonsensical comment, a hateful look, a petty ego issue tiff or people who hurt us, friends who ditched us- in a nutshell about all that we do not like. But we hardly think about the things we want, the people who care for us, whom we like and love, about our ambitions and goals. In a way we take all the good things for granted, paying them no particular attention.

We all have an angel and a devil inside us; we keep feeding the devil and let him grow, and then complain about his power ruling us. Instead, we must keep our focus on what we like and want rather than what is bad and unnecessary. When we dig gold we ignore dirt and stones, we focus on gold and nothing else. Our life is a blank canvass; no one but only we can decide whether to fill it with the rainbow pastels or with the depressing darks.

Her 'illiterate' mother

It was a cool Sunday evening and I was sitting in my hall, when she came. She is the daughter of our colony’s press-wallah. She is mal-nutritioned and stick thin like her mother and the rest of the family who never skip a day no matter how kind or cruel the climate is to them (I feel they can much better feel the mood of the climate for they work everyday without any break under a tin shed clasped to a small tree).

Yup, coming to the actual thing, she came inside and saw me reading. I could see a twinkle in her eyes that comes only when she spots a book. She told me that her illiterate mother is very particular about her studies (she studies in a local govt school) and wants her to study to the highest level. She told me that her mother never ever discriminated between her sons and daughters and wants them to become educated and sophisticated and that she personally asks each sibling to explain what happened in the class, that she tells them not to throw garbage on roads and that to carry a book with them always to avoid any time waste. These thoughts look nice to hear but even nicer when they are come from an illiterate woman having half a dozen children.

Now in contrast, the ‘literate’ people who teach their kids attitude and arrogance, to treat public property like a dustbin, to use hook or crook to get things done, middle class mothers who start looking suitors right after their daughters’ graduation. And all those educated families preferring sons over daughters. Now the basic purpose of this post is what the meaning of education is – to be able to read and write or to be able to understand things and create a positive and open outlook? I feel that illiterate mother of six kids is far more educated then all the degree holders.

The English statesman and author George Savile (1633-1695) had said

“Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught”.

How true!!