21st Century

Don’t sleep; don’t eat
Don’t drink; just think!
Just learn; then unlearn, relearn
Not winning is sinning
So be the best, without rest
Strive! Dive! But don’t live!
Stress! Distress! No peace! But still press!
Lifelines no more matter, meet deadlines; they do
Die if you can but get through!
Production, sale, bank balance
Marketing, HR and blood pressure
If you can make them all at once rise
Only then you’re wise!
And then when you die with a heart stroke
On your tombstone you must write
“Come One! Come All!”

This isn’t a cemetery! Its 21st century!

If a man is not a lover in his 20s, strong in his 30s, rich in his 40s and wise in his 50s, he will never be so”

Now that is a line I don’t remember where exactly I have read but I do know that I want to be each of those alternate words above: lover, strong, rich and wise though not necessarily in that order. If I were given a choice I’d rather be wise, strong enough to stand by my wisdom, love something unconditionally and finally be rich if at all time and wisdom allowed me to.

Success is not about which law school you pass out from or how rich you become. Success is a feeling of satisfaction about your own life and what you have been able to earn from it. “Success is a journey and not an end” might sound clichéd but it is nonetheless true. When I picture myself 80 something wondering how I spent my youth and where did all my middle years go, I want to be satisfied more than being sitting at a back of a Mercedes or a Ferrari that I frankly think is a waste of money when a Swift or an Indica does the same job for me in less than 10% of the price.

Satisfaction does not mean not having worries, regrets or failures. Satisfaction means the over all experience of life being treasure-some. It is when you are happy not with what you have achieved but with the way you have achieved it. Its not about traveling long, its about traveling well and being happy about what the journey has given you.

Satisfaction comes when you know what you have is all you think you need (as against want.) to give a vague idea of what I mean I can use the example above. A Mercedes is a car people use to show their wealth. It has softest of leather seats in the world, best of suspensions, TV, radio, a drink vendor and what not inside it. But the point is, do I need a car or a living room? If a car is all I need then what’s all the show off about? A normal small car like say Swift or Indica will do the same work for me. Hence, I do not need a Mercedes.

Knowledge is something that has many advantages. Firstly, it is cheap. Secondly, it is useful. Thirdly, no one can steal it from you once you have it and most importantly, the more you have it the more you know that what you have is less. The difference between money and knowledge apart from it always being with you is that complete knowledge is harmless. Its greed (also called curiosity) doesn’t harm anyone. Hence I presume that the most important priority in any mans life must be knowledge rather than anything else. Moreover it might also lead to wealth in future.

What is more important however is to stand by your knowledge and your opinion about it in adverse circumstances and also to be able to state your knowledge and opinion candidly, artistically, simply and stubbornly at the same time being understanding of the counterview, respecting it and being open for a change in our view if it indeed is convincing enough.

When it comes to love however there can be as many views as people on this earth. Love is something that you do irrespective of what people think of it. When you do it only because you want to do it and because you enjoy doing it its love. Love gives you the reason to live. Love is the longing, the one thing that you’d do the rest of your life you were told that it was to end a week later. If you don’t have something like that, go find it!
That’s all there is to life, to success and to satisfaction. I think I need to write no more, but what I know is that I’m searching it myself and I shall find it soon.

THPrince.

Bridging The Divide

After browsing through the recent issue of a national magazine I switched to reading an academic competition magazine as a preparation dose for the National Law School of India University Entrance Exams (Popularly known as Big Daddy in law aspirants) that I have been dreaming of cracking. Both the issues had one thing in common; they were about bridging the divide. While the formers’ arguments scattered all over from bridging the divide between haves and have-nots of various kinds ranging from poor and rich to Information technology savvy and unsavvy the academic competition magazine boasted about bridging the gap between rural and the urban India.

But are these the only gaps that need to be bridged? Is there nothing more to a human than material wants of money, technology, of being able to reserve railway tickets at home through the Internet or withdrawing cash from an ATM?

As far as my belief goes, there certainly is. The gap that needs to be bridged in the true sense isn’t and never was of having or not having or of possessing or not possessing materials or resources until recently. It is and has always been of thinking like and thinking unlike. Poverty always there until richness arrived, so was hunger until food. Before poverty or hunger came however, there always lived Humans.

We all agree to the fact that one thing that separates humans from all others is his ability to think, to think independently and act accordingly. And these thoughts come labeled in various forms. Some call it “philosophy” some “religion” and some have their own way to live without labeling it. Conflict occurs when the two thoughts contradict or one is threatened of being wiped out due to the other. Islamic terrorism, Naxalite Terrorism or violence in any other form as of today is the result of this very conflict. The bloodshed, the violence, the loss of life and humanity is its price. It is the price of not being able to coexist along with each other, respecting each other without being a threat to each other.

This inability of not being able to digest foreign thoughts is the result of judging others on our own experiences. It is about looking at life through our self-designed design of pigeonholes denying to believe that some other design may also exist. Unbelieving in some other or every other design than our own makes us want to destroy it or if we can’t, we prefer being away from it. Until and unless a position of respect is achieved by every human mind for itself and every other, the true gap shall never be bridged. Because true gap isn’t about someone having more than me, someone will always have more but the true gap is about someone not thinking like me. One doesn’t require food, money more than necessary to live peacefully but one does require respect to his thoughts to rest in peace.