Today I saw the death of the constant. I saw the world turn, I sensed destiny spin and I felt the ground shift. I learned today that the foundation of your life can in fact become unstable. I saw love take a back-seat to the most unnecessary things.

I refuse to be a part of this. As a man, I'm beholden to my words. They are immutable and unchangeable. There is no honor in a system which allows me to back-track. But here I realize a large part of the mistake is mine. I have made my family believe that I'm a child. If I want to be taken seriously as a man, I have to start behaving as one. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to make some of the most difficult decisions of my life. Unfortunately, this means leaving behind some of the most important parts of my old life.

But I'm glad she came into my life. I feel a sense of elation which I never believed I would. I feel free and unchained. There is nothing beautiful about the Indian. It is a world of unasked for complexities and unwanted necessities. I'm leaving it all behind, as a part of the past I'm neither happy about or proud of. 

I'm a constant disappointment. I've tried hard not to be, but my best just wasn't good enough. Therefore I shall remove myself from the game. I shall no longer be disappointing because I shall no longer participate. I'm going to play a new game now. A game where I am what I am, and nothing more. The people in my life will the people who can accept this. 

In the midst of all this turmoil, I shall reject God. Absentee motherfucker. All through my life, I have weathered my storms myself. The one time I ask for a lifeline, and he's not there. I begged for his help and his guidance. Now I know what I should have known a long time ago. Amar Chitra Katha was just that. A good story to entertain the mindless mass that is the general public.

I reject the god that rejects me. I reject the family that doesn't see my feelings. I reject the culture that enslaves me.

The value of words...

What is the value of your word? At what price do you forgo your self-respect? Can you stand strong when the way out is ever so easy?

Though the reason for this posting might be seemingly trivial, it provides the bed-rock for assessing the integrity of an individual - the value of their words.

I had a wager with a colleague about an important event at office. I was confident of victory as my web was spread far and wide and I was aware of the decision before it was even contemplated by others.

My colleague on the other hand, was swimming in the deep-end with a perspective which was mired in opinion. She was so convinced that she bet a significant amount on that opinion. In the end, I won.

Now comes the interesting part. I offered her a way out - say one sentence. That sentence merely required her to state how I'm right, as always. Though the sentence was irritating, it would have helped her avoid the payment. Considering how her views typically irritate me, I fully expected her to grab on to the life-line I had thrown her. She flat-out refused.

People are strange. I don't get them at all. Just when you expect sand, you come across a mountain. It got me thinking about my price-tag. I'm fairly confident about who I am. I have faced, and continue to face, a never-ending barrage of criticism for every single step I take and I weather it without regret. To the point that arrogance has become my calling card, and I walk tall in the delusion that I have no price. But here, I offer a way out, and in my opinion a simple way out. And yet, there are no takers.

This is the kind of randomness which reaffirms my faith in the human race. No matter how rare, you still see people who value their words to almost illogical levels. Words are powerful. They grant you control, they shower you with fame, they make you infamous, they reward you with audience and yet there are so few who really understand the sharp edge of the weapon they wield. 

Tested in Fire, Born of Steel

Inspired by the latest Adidas cricket ad. I loved the words, and tried to make a few of my own.

The walls just keep getting bigger,

The crowd is yelling, mocking, daring,

Spotlights bear down like an angry sun,

My body screams of pain and sacrifice,

While the heart and mind are numb to all,

Pressure only increases, the rewards decrease,

Voices of support die away like an echo,

Taunts and failures become my shadow,

And just when reason is about to die -

I'm going to stand up one more time,

To shine forth and eclipse the sun,

To bear down and silence the roar,

In this moment, at this place, I am invincible

The Sapphire Wind

Today is another sweep down the eternal corridors of a never-ending spiral. The fanciful flights of birds break the dawn, and yet the birds are an after-blur set against the cold light of an alien moon. Here we belong, and here we remain. Even though the air that seeps through the puerile soil reminds us that suffocation is a mercy, we smile through the dark curtains of our own facades. The waves of our dreams and desires break upon a shore of our steadfast morals and sure-footed assumptions. Like dolphins we prance, little realizing our flights of freedom were confined to a plastic bowl for the amusement of the masses. Dance, they scream - and we do. Little aware that they dictated our actions.

Like puppets on an infinite string the minions fight, over Gods and Demons, over Love and Hate, over what we've already forgotten. All in all, the stardust seems to have broken down over and over till all thats left is mud. The endless crowd of insomniacs soar into the world of broken awareness. Vivid in the monochromatic shades of opportunity, the colors fade into a shapeless, formless amalgamation of constancy. The innocent laughter of children echo through the malignant walls of the abyss. The populace crawls within the belly of progress, churning and turning with the movement of insidious constellations. Some remain on the precipice, the sapphire winds blowing through raven locks. The final step to all the others that need to be walked remains hidden and locked away in a fortress of fear.

Woods that spoke

We walked on in woods that spoke,

Of lost dreams and shattered hopes,

In the rain of the last light of a dying sky,

Forever judged by silent eyes,

And yet when we slept, we marched on,

The purpose colored in vermilion,

And still we gave our eyes to see,

A glimpse of our Utopian insanity,

Where every success is steeped in loss,

The singular bite of a million faults,

The future cried a mother's sigh,

As still-born, we all arrived,

But yet we listen in the heat of anticipation,

For the breath of our own salvation,

And in yearning all faces turn to behold,

The silent bell, resplendent in gold,

But hark, this bell does not ring,

And tonight, no Myna sings,

For here and now we begin to walk,

And yet another day is lost in thought,

Eternally judged and found wanting,

Our backs are turned to the world taunting,

And we find our way into an absolute truth,

When you live for someone, your life bears fruit...

And time stood still

Every now and then, we stop as the world speeds on by. Through the incomprehensible blur of the constant landscape and the streaks left behind by the ghosts of memories, we slow down and breathe. In that moment, clarity becomes a beacon we cannot ignore, and through the gray haze of confusion, the future begins to form.

I wish we knew how to switch off our "Auto-Pilot" feature. We tend to become comfortable, averse to risk, rigid in mind and broken in spirit and we forget that sometimes risk becomes a key to a lock that we had forgotten about. How can we justify our complacence in a world where wonders never cease? But then we keep marching on, like mindless drones to the sound of a piper whose pipes were broken a long time ago. The music that leads us on is abhorrent to our ears, but the comfort we gain from numbers advises us to forgo the cacophony and believe in the merits of conformance. Through rain and hail and smiles and pain, we march on while always losing something intrinsic and beautiful along the way.

I was looking through the Facebook profile of one of my school-time buddies. He's married to the love of his life, and now with a child to herald a future of promise. Surrounded by friends and family. The best part about his profile was that he took a picture of every moment of his life. I was going through his albums, and it left me thinking about how blessed his life is. The pictures bound me to the screen, each picture another chapter in his story, rather their story. And it made me smile a little. Simultaneously, it also made regret how I've never wanted to be in photos.

40 years from now, I would have almost nothing to remind me of how much I've lived. I hope my mind will hold these memories in a chest which I will dust off then. Though I might have seen quite a bit of the world, I do not keep souvenirs. I maintain that I will return whenever I want to. But there are things which I want to cherish and there are times which I can never return to, and these are the hardest currency of all. For having gained it, I would never trade it - but I never accept it in the first place. Recently, I took a chance on something. The chance I took was something so out of character for me, I have a hard time believing it myself. But that chance led to something incredible. My days have grown brighter and my life feels rich. I am lost without words for I really want to describe in words the sheer freedom of leaping off a cliff and learning that we all have wings. We ride on starlight, and sleep on the moon. Our words melt and flow for now we no longer need to speak, because we already know. In being we are all we will be, absolute and pristine we shine. And the genesis of this post, the picture of a man and his son, the conversation of expectation and the response of unmitigated joy and pride was conducted in a picture, without a single word visible and without a single motion comprehensible...and time stood still.

Driftwood

Born into a reality that he had no hope of defining or affecting, he accepted the cruel trappings of fate. At a critical moment, he woke from a lucid dream of never-ending mazes when he chose to tread the path less chosen. On his awakening, there was clarity - and never was clarity bestowed on another so bereft of reason.

The hollowed out shell of the world he participated in screamed out in utter silence. Oh, he still had his options, but his options were too limited to be different. All in all, the beginning and the end was what he chose to perceive it as. Saddened beyond the infinite stretch of human hope, he woke that fateful morning to relish everything he had. He held what he always had in a way that lingered into eternity, his body striving to record everything like the parched desert soil absorbs the rain. Into the darkest corners of his emptiness, he let the light shine. He tenderly reached out to the promise of a future he would not behold.

With a single tear rolling down his left cheek, a symbol of the hallowed seas of fate, he stepped into the busy double-lane traffic - closing his eyes just as his feet touched the asphalt, imagining what heaven would hold for the broken...

Lost Lands

During the great quest for purpose, we came across the greatest obstacle of all. We found a mirror, and in the mirror we saw a broken reflection...the mirror was whole; the distortion lay in our being.

The obstacle turned us away from our destiny, like homing pigeons drowning at sea during the storm of revelation. The endless spiral of self-assessment screams out at you, like a perverse jury of sadomasochistic fiends. When do we start to realize that the long walk into the desert of desolation has left us broken and alone.

The time hallowed corridors of inevitability are adorned with the nameless, faceless portraits of those who've tried and failed and faded away to nothing. The choices we percieve are circular mazes which bring us back to the road we were meant to tread. Our feet do not seek the other road. The lamb does not live in the shadow of the wolf; the lamb lives in fear of it.

The pursuit of happiness

I am an over-achiever. Not a statement of arrogance, as I'm usually expected to do, but more of a statement of fact.I'm 27, and I'm a computer graduate with honors from one of India's toughest and highest ranked institutions for engineering. I am one of the fastest growing employee's in my company, with a package to boot. I am the creator of a framework in my domain, which people with many more years of experience are still struggling to grapple with and my company is trying to patent. I am learning the hindustani classical flute; I do charcoal shadings; I play almost every sport there is; I've read so many books that I lost count long ago; I've done part-time jobs to support my extravagant lifestyle; I've seen more countries and met more CxOs than most people will do in their lifetimes; I've been an international guest speaker at conferences; I've done charity work; I've been to jail for my folks; I'm a group sports captain and an organizer for many of my company's events; I'm a dramatist and an actor; I'm a published poet.

And in the eyes of the people closest to me, I'm a failure.

Everyday is one more chance for me to disappoint the people around me. I struggle with the paradox of not living my own life. Why should any part of my life not be dedicated to my happiness? For currently, my family considers me an alcoholic; extended family has mostly excommunicated me; I am neither a good friend nor am I a good enemy; I am the last thing some people want in their lives; I am a disappointment to my mom and dad; I am not happy inside myself; I am still lost in trying to understand who I am and what I want to do in life.

There is so much of hatred in my life, and so much of resentment, that I fail to understand why I put up with anything. There is a side of me which can end all my issues in a heartbeat; and then there is a side which tends to understand that every part of my life is crucial. But I try not to get home, for home is where I hurt the most. I want to get along with everyone I know. But I can't. I try, but I fail. I love failing, for failing is what made me who I am. Fearless. Reckless. Strong. Honorable. I know I haven't tried unless I fail once. It's important to fail. Failure doesn't build character - it reveals it. Or so I believe. I've lived my life better than most. I don't give in to temptations, I don't cheat people, I've loved with all my heart, I've never given in to drugs, I've respected my culture and my elders - and I've got nothing to show for it but some grief and a whole lotta disappointment.

Day in and day out, there is a never-ending cycle of "prove yourself, or hide yourself". My parents never encouraged me to do anything. They didn't support anything I've tried to do, from school day extra-curriculars to working-day initiatives. I fight through negativity every single day of my life. Supporters are rare and far between. I've rarely heard anyone say anything which makes me feel good about anything. But I'm an extremely positive person. When shit pushes me to the wall, I turn around and say fuck 'em all. I couldn't give a flying fuck about the way people dictate my life to me. In this direction, all us failures do is read motivational stuff. My favorites are outlined below:

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. – Robert F. Kennedy

Success builds character, failure reveals it - Dave Checkett

And my personal favorite of all time:

I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed. – Michael Jordan

The End of all promises...

The End of all promises begins with the gentle sigh of doubt. A life unfulfilled starts to sound like hail on a tin roof - the ringing notes become a constant reminder of things that will never be. The echoes become the ghosts of christmas past. They begin to haunt you as you try and flee in a velvet corrider of self-loathing. The end of the corridor looms close, and then you realize that the exit loops back to the entry. The only difference is, now you're falling into an infinite pit. Glimpses of your life shoot past - those choices which would have changed your road, those people who would've meant something, those moments which you failed to treasure.

Yet, in the vortex of shattered lives you smile, and you smile, and you smile - not the hollow smile of the insane, but the knowing smile of the preternaturally wise. It was all for naught, after all. We're so caught up trying to peek behind the satin curtain of finality, we often forget that death will embrace us all for one night. She is everyones mistress, and no one's whore.

Why then like ants do we scamper trying to find meaning in a world bereft of reason. Nothing happens for a reason. In fact, nothing is all that happens here. Like lost children in an abandoned carnival, we ooh and aah at the sights we see, but we refuse to understand that the carnival died a long time ago. Its sad that the clowns are gone, and the man on the flying trapeze is no longer the star he used to be. But stars die, and back to dust they go. Stardust. I am the cumulation of this endless cycle of despair and death - and the star's dreams lie dead in the Stardust that forms my corporeal form. Long after I'm gone, my dead dreams would be hidden in someone else's body, like a man buried alive. Silent and desperate to break out. But there lies six feet of dirt between the reality and the aspiration . Where then do the screams die? In reality, there never was a scream. Only the whimpering cry of acceptance. The End of all promises begins with the gentle sigh of doubt.

Relationships are a farce...

I've had a lot of time to myself recently due to various reasons. During this otherwise uneventful period of clubbing, partying, meeting new people etc. something wonderful reared its head. I saw this movie recently by the name of "Into the wild". There has never been a movie that I believed in as much as this one.

Through life we see a lot of relationships - friends, family, enemies, contacts and so on. There is one underlying fact about most of these relationships.

We...always...compromise

Every sentient being enters into a relationship because there is a gain. The good relationships are the type where the gain is mutual and the bad being the one where the rewards are reaped by one and the burdens are sown into the life of the other. The thing that has always irked me is that the world doesn't work according to my time-table. When I want to stay home, people call up for a do. When I want to go out, people have got other things. When I don't want to work, customers send over a billion documents. When I want to work, there is nothing to do. There are soooo many more instances, but I think you get the picture. I know the thought is selfish, but somehow I don't really care about what anyone thinks. I have come to a realization that life seems to be like a really bad movie at times. There are the great days in between, but in general life is about doing things you really don't want to.

Why should I do anything except that which I want to? This is a question that irritates me to no end, because I know the answer. No man is an island. We need interaction. Or do we? I believe that this thought process is the result of generations of conditioning. Everyone tells us, directly or indirectly, that we need to be accepted, we need to be loved, we need to be cool or any one of a billion things that we "need" to be. I can understand that among animals, this might hold true for there is a genetic programming that tells them about safety in numbers and a chance at breeding. But I thought humans believed we were more than animals. If that holds true, then we are divine by ourselves. We do not "need" each other.

There are a billion ties that hold you down. There are tons of "must-do" things that vex and burden you. There are so many opportunities for people to hurt you or make you feel bad about something. Then of course, there is the inevitable loneliness of when someone abandon's your corner.

Why do we "need" to have relationships? I cannot think of a single reason so abject and so without any downside to support it. Time makes you think, and when you think you grow. Many a time you grow out of the current container you possess. Will everyone understand your growth? Will anyone support it?

The deception of man

In every moment of our waking lives, we seek something beautiful. Beautiful cannot be described in the extremely limited perceptions of a single person, but needs to be seen from the eyes of a flock. Anything could be beautiful - art, music, sport, competition and even war. It depends purely on the perspective of the seeker. The real question which is the basis of this discussion is, why do we seek to compare?

Is it intrinsically wired into us to strive to find something in comparison to which our life is gray? Do we always need the yardstick to self-deprecate? There are a few people, and very few at that, who have found everything beautiful within themselves. The rest of us are stuck in a rut where our every attempt to appreciate ourselves end in a quest for validation; and the world does not validate, or even attempt to tip the scales in our favor.

But does that make the search futile, or does it make the object of scrutiny frivolous? Something comparable is not unique, and what is not unique is not yourself. No piece of clothing is unique, no car you drive is unique, no house you build is unique - all of these can be replicated. But how you react to a situation is probably unique. The data you processes, the choices that you realize, the motivators that drive you and the actions that you perform are truly unique. The same cannot be replicated. The situation need not be life-threatening, but might be something as simple as looking at the sun-rise. What you see in that moment and what it means or how it affects you is unique. How do we compare that which is unknown even to us?

The answer is in the question - we don't. We don't compare because we are not fully aware. When we are aware, we attempt to dissect it and rationalize. As part of the rationalization we, unknowingly, bias our judgement. The world is very different when you look through the eyes of a deserted action figure lying on the side of the road, watching the approach of a truck that will forever alter it's visage. But across the road from the perspective of a bird chirping away towards a heedless sun, the world is rich and full. Neither of them got it right.

The world is what it is, and it doesn't care how you perceive it. The world is cold to opinion. Beautiful things are a way of the world to compensate for the life you wish you had. There is nothing missing in your life but self-realization. When you know what you want, you will get it. Try it, it works. You don't need any "Who moved my cheese?" or "7 Habits of highly successful people" kind of books to tell you what you need to do. You also don't need "The Alchemist" or "The monk who sold his Ferrari" kind of books to teach you deeper thought or morality. You don't even need to read this blog to know this.

There are no shortcuts, except the kind which gives you 5 years of joy and 50 years of pain. But the joy is in the journey. If you inherited 500 million dollars and you bought a Ferrari, and another person starved for 4 years but his business finally takes off and then he buys a Toyota, which car would give its owner more pleasure? But here I digress, for the topic is still the subject of comparison.

In the end, we are what we are. Comparison is the devil, for it promises us a different path. But unknown to you, you are already treading a path with no ancillary roads. There is no junction that allows you to cross onto that other path. We have to see the road we walk on, lest the monster that awaits ahead swallow us while we are lost in a silent soliloquy about the virtues of everyone else's life.

Don't know the title, but random words do make a blog...

Ever get the feeling that something big is around the corner? Like ants crawling around the bend towards a pot of honey built within an empty city? Then again, there is nothing wrong with being part of a herd. The herd is protection - protection from consequence, protection from choice, protection from change. But sometimes, there's nothing wrong with change. At the start of each day, if we choose to remember what is lost, then everything we see today becomes tainted by the drive to preserve. If we are free of inhibition, then the world is crystal clear.

There is something weird in the hollow march of tin soldiers. Further compounded by the rattle of rain on the rooftops of a shallow world. From the din of organization to the sin of information, we are doomed to follow the tracks of a mythical creature towards a goal that does not exist.

The moment of clarity is the sound of the sliver of glass cutting through a mist of human emotion. There is no right or wrong - only the judgement of myopic moments. And myopic indeed are our judgement, for who has seen beyond the next frame? But in the moment, can we make a tough call and still be without regret? For everyone who tells me they feel no regret, I see liars who choose to remain stoic or else I see cowards who've never taken a tough call. We make tough calls when we judge something valuable against something valuable. Either way, you lose. When you lose something valuable, you begrudge yourself the loss. You regret it.

No one is an island. But sometimes, we are the temple of our echoes. Vast empty spaces, where the resonance of our ideal is our sole attempt at existence. On this path, the echoes travel far and wide, but in the end the echo dies out. Nothing would remain of the echo, not even the memory. Did it in fact trigger a new sound? Did it spawn a new thought? The echo is all it is...all it will ever be.

Random words can be something better than the construct-driven will of the writer.

The effervescence of time...

There was a line in the movie 'Troy' which I felt was excellent. The line goes - "The Gods envy us(mortals) because we are doomed". It was beautiful in how true it is. Personally, I do not know if the Gods do envy us mortals, but I do believe the paucity of time makes the most mundane activity special.

We hear a lot about how man cries out for one more day when death comes to claim him. But what would you do if you were granted that one more day? What would be so special about the one extra day? The only thing that would change is your perception of the world. The closer we come to the end, the more we appreciate that which we took for granted earlier. Nothing really changes, except our knowledge of time ticking away. But what if you were frozen in time. Would anything be beautiful? Would anything be worthy? Unfortunately for us humans, we never know the value of something, unless the possibility of loss looms overhead.

Does this mean that the item of endearment is empty in of itself, but the circumstance of loss makes it desirable?

Time is a fantastic thief. He steals both before his arrival and during it as well. I know of so many people who, in the grip of fear of some terminal event, neglect to see what is present and lose out on the item during the end-state as well. Time, in my mind, is a way for us to appreciate that which we wouldn't have if eternity unfurled in front of us. Time must be a creation of perception, for time is nothing but the flow between two events. One might argue about causality, but cause and effect do not always hold true.

Time is a construct for us to maintain sanity. Alternatively, time might be holding us back from some greater truth. Consider if you could move back and forth between events. There is no time, only movie frames which are slightly different. I believe you could affect your reality. I believe you could shape your future. I believe you can decide your past.

But is this so different from the way things are now? We judge ourselves to be successful or failures. We deem our childhood good or bad. We say that the future holds great promise. Is that not time travel? If you are confused, what I mean to say is that our perception defines our life. If we deem ourselves to be failures, then so we are. If we decide to make something of our lives, our futures get brighter.

Where is time in the equation? If you lived for 70 years, why beg for one more day? What would you achieve in that one more day that you haven't already done? Life is about mistakes and the joy of discovery.

Life isn't measured by how many days you live, rather it's a collage of moments that defined you.

Silence is the state of being

A strange thing about people, myself included - we need to be in a state of perpetual motion for us to validate the self-deluded destiny we believe is ours. We need to have a job with defined goals. We need people in our lives to be a witness to our doings. We need friends to complement our character. But in the end, when you come back home, you are alone.

By alone, I do not mean physically. You might be married or single. You might be staying with friends or family. The concept of alone is the reality of your existence. The way you perceive your individuality. By definition, you are an individual because you are unique. There is only one "you". And as a singularity, you will always be alone. No one knows you better than yourself. No one hates or loves you as much as yourself. In this impassable void of differences, are you comfortable? Is your sense of being so complete that in the silence of oblivion you find peace?

When I'm alone, I find I retrospect. My mind races through the images and sounds I saw that day. I challenge my choices and find my failings. But this is not a conscious process. This self-actualization happens in a moment of silence. With or without my express permission.

But I wonder, as a species of animal, is this need for self-validation an inherent instinct or is it the effect of continual conditioning by the viral waves of society? Is the need for purpose an unnatural evolution of the mind or is it a natural by-product of a thinking conscious? Do we need to make choices to be alive, or is it the facilitator of the illusion that we are more than stardust in an infinite universe?

When I think about the scale of things, I wonder what I affect by my actions. Does the rules of chaos theory extend to the outermost fringes of space and consciousness? Does the beating of the butterfly's wings create the apocryphal hurricane at the polar opposite?

Recently, I've found a great sense of bliss in being alone. I am by nature an extrovert, but there is a profound serenity in looking inwards. The questions posed by the external world are trivial compared to the unlocked gates of deeper reasoning. My recent circumstances are not by design, but due to most of my friends travelling for extended periods. However, this time has shown me something that I always suspected.

There are worlds inside you, but these are located in a universe of silence. When the individual part of you is fine with loss of identity, only then can these worlds be traversed. For in the universe of silence, sound is an abhorrent thing. The ego is a cancer, and the individual is unnatural. This world slips into the chimera that is the world we see and breathe. Yet, in the hustle and bustle for the next raise, the next promotion, we hardly find time to save ourselves from becoming a machinist of life.

The inadequacy of the human condition

Recently, a friend of mine gave up on something he was determined to succeed in. It was irritating to me since I was a witness to the triumph of the circumstance over the individual. Even more irritating was the fact that he was so close to victory, but he needed to hold on; he needed to persevere.

I am at a complete loss when I am faced with the prospect of defeat; and because of this weakness, I consciously try to not recognize the consequences of my decisions. I believe in taking life as it comes, one day at a time. But today is an opportunity that will never present itself again. So why let go of a free gift? A day is only 24 hours long. We can skip days in heartbeats if we choose to not notice how each day crawls on by. I do not understand the reason for surrender - its just not beneficial whichever way you look at it. Failure is acceptable, but when we give up we have lost all the days, the present included, where we have striven for something.

But maybe it's something intrinsic. As an animal, we are hardwired to avoid situations where we will be at a loss. This is the single seed of the of human intelligence. The progenitor of need and the father of desire. In anticipation of an empty future, the fruits of the present would seem bitter and sour. But the attempt is it's own reward.

The attempt is the reach for glory. The attempt is proof positive that you are a thinking, living human being. Conscious thought, that which separates us from baser animals, is the ability to merge a known situation with intangible items like hope. The belief that the river will suddenly change it's course without a predetermined pointer to such an event. This is what makes an entrepreneur, this is what makes a leader, this is what makes a visionary - the ability to not only see things as they are, but the flexibility to perceive things as they might be.

In life, almost everyone tells you it can't be done. Almost everyone convinces you that things are fine as they are. The circumstances begin to increase the weight on our shoulder, till we become Atlas and balance the world on our backs. The night does seem darkest before the dawn. If we spent our lives listening to what we "should be" or what we "should do", then we become nothing more than a statistic. Another number or name against a birth certificate, matriculation certificate, proof of employment and a death certificate. Is your life defined by your certificates? Are we another entry in a database of irrelevant facts? Are we predestined to be another face in the crowd, another brick in the wall?

As a race, we seem determined to reduce the individual to a member of a herd. The reasons for this might be numerous, but there is a fantastic line I heard in coach Carter, and it goes as below:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone."

The Ding : Ding Aling has his Review

Demon Dog

Yup, this post is about Axel. The once cute and helpless little pup has grown into a veritable demon dog today. Guess his favorite game? If you said, chase down the powerless human maggots and take a bite out of them, well then you guessed right!!!

He means no harm...I guess its the way I'm raising the fellow. Axel has a strong animal streak running deep within, or just under the layer. It depends on how much of the animal Axel sees in you. One of my new games is to come in real close and look him in the eye.

To a dog, staring them in the eye is a sign of aggression...and there's a good chance the dog will lunge at you. Now, Axel is a sweetheart but he will rise to the challenge. There have been a few instances where he almost got my eye when we were playing at wrestling. Here's a snapshot of what one bite from Axel can do...

Then again, I like him to be this way. I believe that an animal is always so much more honest than a human. There is a purity to its actions, a freedom which most of us have forgotten. Axel bites when he wants to, he plays when he wants to and when he licks you, its because he loves you. It's as simple as that. There are no hidden strings or ulterior motives. It's always true. For the most part, I have lost faith in human beings. There is something so artificial about all of us. There is a very real part of us that has been lost and all that remains is an acerbic imitation.

Know what I hate above all?

I hate posers. I hate people who just cannot accept who they are. Maybe I overreact to things, but posers irk me. I believe that whatever your shortcoming, the method of getting better begins with understanding who we are and where we are at this moment. Can you, at the moment of reading this post, stand up right now(wherever you are) and shout your name? Will you go to bed tonight feeling everything went right today? Will you search for yourself in others?

I know people in my life who fall at extreme ends of the human scale. I know people who have battled incredible odds to be the successful people they are today and on the other end I know the whiners who have everything they need except the will and self-discipline to achieve something.

I know people who've refused to give up in the face of unsurmountable odds, and I know people who fail before they've begun. There are people who had no potential and no hope, but they are far happier people today because they tried...and true to human behavior, when they found a boundary (i.e. their limit), they pushed at it and succeeded. We can never overcome what we do not know. We can never defeat that which we do not challenge. We can never be anyone more than who we choose to be. Adversity brings out the best in some of us and breaks the rest of us.

In the face of our greatest fear, some of us find how noble we truly are, even if we never knew it ourselves and then there are those that choose to let the fear rule their lives. It is in the attempt for glory that we fall apart at our seams, and that which is inside us comes to light. In some of us, that which is inside is so much brighter than the dull confines of the human condition and in some of us we find the hubris, the arrogance, the darkness, the fear and the failure that define the human species.

I hate people who don't believe. They are already dead to everything there is in the world. These are the voices that tell you something is impossible. These are the people who have never tried and want to discourage something unique in you. These are the people who know the cost of everything, but not the value of anything. These are the people who have forgotten how to dream. They need people to tell them what to do, why it needs to be done and how to do it. There is no inner voice, no destiny for these people except to dance to the bidding of people who need no guidance.

I hate injustice. I hate the strong oppressing the weak. I hate the attempt to subjugate those who mean you no harm. I hate the man who beats a dog for no reason other than his perverse pleasure. I cannot abide by the rantings of the social police, hoodlums who beat the law-abiding citizen into submission, the drunk husbands of our glorious nation, the corrupt bureaucrats and in some situations, the shackles of society. Where do we get off standing tall among 50 when there is a single opponent who will not bow down? I cannot, and I will not, be among the silent mindless horde.

The manifesto of the human being is a work in progress. But the vision is clear -

"Stay the course. In the face of temptation and fear, failure and rejection, horror and disappointment, stay the course."

Prayer to the living

In the depths of despair I wallowed,
Grasping for mercy, gasping for breath,
Into the rigid truth of certainty I fled,
A specter of the man I was to become,

In the depths of my agony I felt,
The hand of purpose upon my breath,
And in the moment of a Higher Calling,
My fears aside were swept,

Oh glorious seconds, how I counted,
What seemed like eternity now a moment,
And in that crystal purity of life,
I yearned to remember, I learned to forget,

Look beyond tomorrow, the legacy should remain,
For purpose, for justice, beyond my name,
A shadow, an imprint that I once lived,
My gift to the child with eyes unopened yet,

The colors of the world leapt out at me,
The sounds of joy sang in crystal clarity,
In that second of euphoria I saw,
More to life than death's gaping maw,

How blind we are to what we have,
How lost in our own deceptions,
In the velvet hands of sorrow,
We carve our own assumptions,

Oh child of man, how I long to be you,
To have a wife, to be borne a child,
To grow old to see your dreams take flight,
To see in you, the hopes of tomorrow,

Though I shall be interred young in years,
Each day would be spent as ten,
I beseech the living to witness,
Your pain, your sorrow, is not your end...