Victory

An excerpt from Ted Roosevelt's speech in Paris in 1910:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Desires

He said to his friend, "Hey, when you get done with school, if you want, we can go away backpacking through Europe."
Some months later, he quit his job. He went backpacking through Europe for three months.
Now, he secured a job with a great firm, he bought a house by a lake and has a boat docking area. The job pays well and he now has, what seems to be, an excellent house.

Food for thought?

Fined yourself

What is it about songs that makes them anchors for our memories? What I'm referring to are not visual memories, rather they are emotional or may be subconscious memories. I was listening to Eddie Vedder's creations for the OST of Into the Wild:
"They think of me and my wandering but I'm never what they thought."
"When I stand beside her, I am the better man."
Before you believe me referring to love, let me say in the words of the Joker (Heath Ledger):
I'm not. No, I'm not.

The crux of this write-up is, what I would like to call, a mixture of rumination and self-actualization. The first line I wrote above used to signify something about me, something that I understood very well and that I allowed to fit for me. When I heard the same sentence today, I was in awe simply because the physical manifestation (heavy words :| ) of that sentence was evident in my Kentucky trip, but the actual feeling of that sentence was missing.

It's time to go back to who you used to be, if only to remember how you used to be and what you stood for because there is something unique about every one of us and we fail to exercise that. We let life conquer us and we accept a different form of contentment.
Wrong? No.

It's a tough battle, and may be, it's not even a battle. May be I am thinking to much as I always do - but this is me and I believe I love me :)

CQ

Pain is critical to success.
I have tried to shirk adversities, may be because it is very human to do so. But then, the greatest learning one gets is from fear, failure, or experience. Due to the way society has developed, we tend to stay on one side of the fence and remain within the realm of that which is acceptable by society.
I see nothing wrong with this, but the way I see certain things, I see that life is meant to be boring and mundane, and the way we programme ourselves, we are able to take care of ourselves through the boredom of life; my question is, why do we like to take care of ourselves?

The answer is obvious, but too often, we tend to be over-protective and hesitate to look beyond the box. Did you ever think of the fact that you could have been a writer or a dancer? Did you do anything to try and achieve that end? I believe not.
Why?
We tend to follow set patterns and we like to believe we are secure. Ask yourself this: You are 70 years old, you have earned money and you have a family; are you happy with the way you lived your life? My guess is: Yes. We tend to find solace in the way we have lived life.
Ask yourself: Would I much rather have done something else? Yes.
Most of those things (which we would have rather done) may be too far-fetched. But some of those things were very achievable. We CHOSE to stay safe and we CHOSE the normal path. Often we blame circumstances, parenting, social pressures and the like, but we CHOOSE things. We decide to ignore the freedom of choice that we possess.

This brings me to my next topic: Materialism. It has been ingrained in us since childhood; earn money, earn prestige, earn a name, be respected, own your home, own your car, provide for your family... Wrong? No.
But have you taken a step back and asked yourself why you have done the things you have done? Why you are doing the things you are doing?
And why you want to do the things you want to do?
We have an inherent understanding of success and contentment and happiness...
When was the last time you shut your eyes and took a deep breath? You are reading this right now but you are barely aware of what you are reading. Wait. Shut your eyes and take a deep breath. Pauses are necessary. Questions are fun. Learning is essential.

I have experienced pain in my life and I am by no means unique. All of us have experienced pain, and that pain has taught us things. I have spent sleepless nights hoping for certain things, I have worried about things in my past, which I now look back upon and laugh... I have left things, I have thrown away things, and things have thrown away me. It's a random continual process that helps us evolve.
I am writing from the US right now; I am scared of coming back to Mumbai and finding myself alone (I'm human after all), but I sincerely look forward to it. Why? I have accepted life as a journey and I await fun. I am waiting for myself to sit alone and cry, sit with friends and laugh and read a book at peace. It's all a learn and life is a uni-directional experience.

This ties in with what I started off with... we tend to fall into files.
We tend to believe we are special seeds and that the world is unaccepting, but we are wrong! The world has a large heart, it is we who tend to shut ourselves up out of fear and we who are afraid of going away for only a bit, even for twenty minutes and walking and talking by ourselves.
May be, just may be, humans were meant to be self sufficient (emotionally) and somewhere along the way heurism got the better of us and we began falling in line. Take a breath, take a step back and look at yourslef in the mirror. Go right now and find the colour in your eyes. Trust me when I say this: It's a brilliant colour :)

A Pond

Went jogging towards the south from my apartment. Reached the "Research Center" where a lot of companies have their offices (may be on U of I property - Daym its a rich university).
So I'm jogging and I pass this pond inhabited by geese. So I stop. And I sit on the grass with the geese's 'quacking' in the background. Eventually, I lie down on the grass and stare at the blue sky. No other person in sight. And I think to myself:

I may never do this again after 20 days. This moment is nice and it feels good to breathe freely and stretch my arms and see an actual pond and stare at the sky. I hope I travel even after I go back to Mumbai.