Books, notes, blogs, licensed paper, back-of-pack text, newspapers and even labels....I LOVE reading
There's a place in my head that I escape to.
What I read becomes me.
Every word, letter and syllable is the wind, earth and the sea.
A legal paper confirming a lease tenant draws pictures in my head; notes make me wonder at the variety of subjects we human beings have created.
Obsessive-compulsive need to record the move of every atom and the reason why Ms. Z changed her nail colour makes for fascinating escapism.
I write this in sheer awe of the volumes of text I have had the privilege to read and the volumes more that I know are waiting.
Keep it coming!
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
Of molds, stereotypes and happiness.
It is said that a man becomes a philosopher when he’s not happy with his wife.
For the average, working 20-something these days, the phrase might well apply to professional life. It’s amazing how much a job can take over life’s rhythm and patterns. For 20 years of our life we slowly graduate from play to study to work. We learn to equate happiness to doing something we love doing and doing it well. Many opinions shape our lives and slowly we go off-track. Potential artists become doctors and future engineers turn to sales and marketing.
Nurtured in a sea of stereotypes, it’s still difficult to mix and match the right ones in a formula that suits a particular individual pretty much exactly. Many break out of the moulds set for them. Some make it to the peaks they aimed at, many don’t. There’s an ocean of people out there who’d rather be doing something vastly different and there’s many more who don’t know what precisely they ought to be doing anyway.
Every now and then I find myself marveling at the zest which some people carry on at work. Here’s one type, the type that makes the things they do work for them and derive happiness therein. It’s a pleasant place to be in. Curiosity arises almost naturally and they seem to apply it in all the right places. They’re the ones that used the mold to get them happiness; they’re the ones that tick off milestones.
How then does one set about finding out how to keep oneself occupied and happy. Is the exercise of identification and implementation enough? Yes I think, but not always. As people grow, they change and with that change, one must evolve, as opposed to resist. Life works in strange ways; each twist, turn and straight road will lead only to the road’s end. How we find happiness along the way is up to us.
For the average, working 20-something these days, the phrase might well apply to professional life. It’s amazing how much a job can take over life’s rhythm and patterns. For 20 years of our life we slowly graduate from play to study to work. We learn to equate happiness to doing something we love doing and doing it well. Many opinions shape our lives and slowly we go off-track. Potential artists become doctors and future engineers turn to sales and marketing.
Nurtured in a sea of stereotypes, it’s still difficult to mix and match the right ones in a formula that suits a particular individual pretty much exactly. Many break out of the moulds set for them. Some make it to the peaks they aimed at, many don’t. There’s an ocean of people out there who’d rather be doing something vastly different and there’s many more who don’t know what precisely they ought to be doing anyway.
Every now and then I find myself marveling at the zest which some people carry on at work. Here’s one type, the type that makes the things they do work for them and derive happiness therein. It’s a pleasant place to be in. Curiosity arises almost naturally and they seem to apply it in all the right places. They’re the ones that used the mold to get them happiness; they’re the ones that tick off milestones.
How then does one set about finding out how to keep oneself occupied and happy. Is the exercise of identification and implementation enough? Yes I think, but not always. As people grow, they change and with that change, one must evolve, as opposed to resist. Life works in strange ways; each twist, turn and straight road will lead only to the road’s end. How we find happiness along the way is up to us.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Reality bites
This morning, after an evening's worth of exposure to an arsenal of reality shows, I caught myself wondering what would happen if a participant was seriously, perhaps even fatally injured. Would the reality show be barred from airing? How would it affect TRPs of the channel? Would an incident like that affect the lay person's view of reality shows, possibly cause a withdrawal effect? Who knows what could happen.
In the evening I walked into news proclaiming the death of an eleven year old due to suicide. She featured in some dance based shows and was known to be a bubbly child. The awful act was discovered when her younger sister came home from school in the afternoon. No one is aware how it came about. Her own parents said she gave away no such intentions even as late as that very morning.
It was a tough task for her instructor to convince her parents about letting her star in dance-based reality shows. When her grades started dropping, they pulled her out so she could concentrate on her academics. And this to a girl who'd been dancing for 4 years of the most impressionable stage of her life.
What possible pressure could lead a eleven year old to her own death? My mind worked in three definitive directions. (a)Unidentified depression due to flailing academics[and the pressure that goes with it]added to the 'sudden' dearth of dance (b)child abuse, physical or otherwise (c)she was dancing with her dupatta and unfortunately it caught in the fan. This last option is the most unlikely, yet, for the sake of preserving childhood innocence, how I wish it was.
In the evening I walked into news proclaiming the death of an eleven year old due to suicide. She featured in some dance based shows and was known to be a bubbly child. The awful act was discovered when her younger sister came home from school in the afternoon. No one is aware how it came about. Her own parents said she gave away no such intentions even as late as that very morning.
It was a tough task for her instructor to convince her parents about letting her star in dance-based reality shows. When her grades started dropping, they pulled her out so she could concentrate on her academics. And this to a girl who'd been dancing for 4 years of the most impressionable stage of her life.
What possible pressure could lead a eleven year old to her own death? My mind worked in three definitive directions. (a)Unidentified depression due to flailing academics[and the pressure that goes with it]added to the 'sudden' dearth of dance (b)child abuse, physical or otherwise (c)she was dancing with her dupatta and unfortunately it caught in the fan. This last option is the most unlikely, yet, for the sake of preserving childhood innocence, how I wish it was.
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