Whereabouts

Jhumpa Lahiri's Whereabouts is the reflection of a certain kind of life, which, you could say, is engagingly involved but detached, immersed, yet removed. A bold but guarded existence that is keen, observant, perceptive, and practical, living in bare reality, far from pretensions or wishful thinking. 

Set in an unnamed place, evidently in Italy, this is the story of the narrator who goes about her everyday living in the backdrop of her solitary life. Lahiri's expression of even some of the most elementary things, in a manner that is exquisite, yet simple, makes for wonderful reading - often allowing the reader to plunge into some sort of recollection and escape, contemplating how life was or would have been under similar conditions. But, above all, it is hugely refreshing to the mind, to be able to induce a calm sense of detachment and freedom from the mundaneness of human existence, although that is not overtly conveyed in any sense.

The dominant theme of the narrative, recounted in first person, is a focus on the passage of life itself, that is fleeting, complete with everyday occurrences, beautifully described, often with limited words, yet, in a tastefully appealing manner, surely to have a lasting impact on any perceptive mind. It is an incredibly powerful portrayal of how life is transcendental and that the nature of events is momentary and fading, without lasting consequence.

Even so, it has everything in it - love, the lack of it, romance, desire, deceit, age and its effect, vulnerability, emotions, people and their interactions, and so on. What it does not restrict itself or follow is a certain structure or form. Instead, one finds immense freedom and relief in the manner in which the story is recounted, knowing that there are no fixed destinations to arrive at or people to go to. There is a deep sense of liberation in that thought.

Lone Fox Dancing

Books are gateways to idyllic journeys into far-off worlds. They are expeditions of indulgence, for in undertaking such voyages, one is transported to enchanting places and multitudes of emotions. And, as indulgent I am in such gleeful delights, which is, I suppose, the supreme pleasure, of most bibliotaphs, oftentimes, I find myself buying more books than I can possibly consume.

So, one morning, on a whim, and to fight off a gripping sense of inertia that has overrun me lately, I went about to rummage my stockpile (not a 'collection,' since I haven't graduated to such an exalted stature, nor I possibly will), to find myself staring at the 'Lone Fox Dancing' - The Autobiography of Ruskin Bond, a treasure I had acquired not so long so.

To say that the prose was eclectic would be an act of self-aggrandizement and arrogance on my part (for I possess no skills or qualifications to review such a prodigy). But, say it, I nevertheless will, for that is how this master chronicler has woven his account.

Not so long after, I trudged about on winding paths in the misty hills on which stood tall pine and deodar. Overcome by a deep sense of nostalgia (of times from my own childhood spent in the hills of Ooty), I began to understand the ways of a man who had trounced the oft-inescapable (and enforced) notion of a regular life - to search for freedom, for deliverance, to undertake a peregrination of his longing - 'to put pen to paper', as he called it. It wasn't fanciful or lucrative. Far from it, actually. Steeped in strain and struggle, it conveyed the unbounded eagerness of a man resolved to do what he loved. Not that he envisioned it would take him any place. I suppose he didn't care for the outcomes as much as he was enthralled by the machinations of his life and the blissful wilderness that he was so purposefully ensconced in. I doubt he cares even now.

Bond's account is not macerated with his literary pursuits. While there are rich portrayals of that endeavour, the book is much larger than that effort. It is life itself, the comings and goings of people, the rich description of deep, personal emotions associated with such occurrences, some pleasant, others acerbic. It is a work of outstanding artistry that quite effortlessly articulates the mind of a reticent man (in which, being quite withdrawn myself, I found reassuring comfort and tenderness)

In the end, which came about much sooner than I had expected, I was left feeling joyful and troubled - The first for obvious reasons, while the latter for having finished the book all too soon!

But, deep within my being will remain etched forever those snow-capped hills, bungalows from a distant past, coniferous trees, the taste of tangy apricots, and the astounding views from a window that opens to the mountains.

Long may the lone fox dance! 

Remembering Mrs. G

Prime Minister for a staggering four terms, known for her charisma, astute political sense and her ostentatious display of authority, Indira and India have remained synonymous in the minds of many Indians for a long time, gaining iconic status.

It is coincidental that, on this day, I find myself reading her biography, authored by Katherine Frank whose work is not merely a biography, but a splendidly candid almanac, with remarkable detail, offering a very deep insight into the life of a dynamically complex person.

While Indira will forever be known for a strong culture of nepotism that she fostered, the chronicles of her life by Frank is truly the result of painstaking research involving a great deal of meticulousness and detail the like of which is seldom matched.

Footnotes:

Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi
Author: Katherine Frank
Hardcover: 592 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (January 7, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 039573097X
ISBN-13: 978-0395730973

Of The Spirit

The universal mind choreographs everything that is happening in billions of galaxies with elegant precision and unfaltering intelligence. Its intelligence permeates every fiber of existence - from the atom to the cosmos.

Footnotes:

Excerpts from a book, I'm presently reading, by Deepak Chopra, who never ceases to impress.

History of Nearly Everything

Presently reading Bill Bryson's acclaimed work 'A Short History of Nearly Everything.'

Couldn't help but make a post on an opening excerpt which reads thus;

The physicist Leo Szilard once announced to his friend Hans Bethe that he was thinking of keeping a diary; 'I don't intend to publish. I am merely going to record the facts for the information of God'.'Don't you think God knows the facts?' Bethe asked. 'Yes,' said Szilard. 'He knows the facts, but he does not know this version of the facts.'

Footnotes:

Originally stated in Taming the Atom by Hans Christian von Baeyer

This conversation struck a deep chord within me, owing perhaps to my regimen of log keeping that is now so many years into the making! 

The Pale Blue Dot

Image Description: This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed ‘Pale Blue Dot’, is a part of the first ever ‘portrait’ of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic. From Voyager's great distance Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the Sun. This blown-up image of the Earth was taken through three color filters – violet, blue and green – and recombined to produce the color image. The background features in the image are artifacts resulting from the magnification.

Some excerpts from Carl Sagan's book, Pale Blue Dot, which have to be read after one leafs through the image and its description mentioned above.

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Footnotes:

Image Courtesy: Wikipedia

Content Reference: Google Books

About the book;

Title - Pale blue dot: a vision of the human future in space
Author - Carl Sagan
Publisher - Ballantine Books
ISBN - 0345376595, 9780345376596
Length - 360 pages

A Beautiful Boy

13 December 2010
Chennai, India

Dear David

I never will possibly understand what you could have been through over the years, often battling overwhelming odds to ardently shelter your loved one from a destructive force that is almost always all permeating in the mind and the body!

I began reading your account 'Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction' this past weekend and I must tell you how touched I am. One cannot readily imagine the situation of a parent, or a child, who is faced with a situation such as yours, except wonder how telling it would be on the strength of the family to pull through another day, as if that were perhaps the most arduous of tasks ever.

Besides, dealing with a feeling of guilt while maintaining stoic disposition of wanting to control the situation, and yet being unable to successfully chance upon a measure of cure, someone in such a situation must, I believe, be terribly caught in a quandary over being so utterly powerless in the very first place.

Perhaps, the biggest and most commendably courageous step forward, apart from of course, being the person that you were during those telling times, was your remarkable ability in speaking to the world what it was to be who you were, the family included.

Surely, today, all of you are much stronger with the realization that there have been many lessons learnt with the passage of time and I take this opportunity to greatly appreciate the person you are for the unimaginable commitment and courage that you have so characteristically displayed, without a moment of doubt, specifically at a time when all of that would have been so easily impossible!

I'm touched, beyond words and cannot possibly describe how it feels!

Very sincerely,

V. Rakesh

Footnotes: 

Beautiful Boy is about a very moving account of a boy and his addiction to Methamphetamine, narrated in first person by his father.

Cheerio Master Blaster

It was on this day in the year 1989 that Sachin Tendulkar made his debut as an international cricketer!

To witness someone so consistent in performance, to be able to achieve excellence over excellence, and much more, with unfaltering pace and poise, is a rarity, and truly a matter of immense pleasure, something that will stand unparalleled.

I don't quite see the need to wax over his momentous achievements in this post - somethings simply need no elucidation whatsoever! East is east, spoken of, or otherwise! And do remember, this is coming from someone who has not even the slightest inclination to understand cricket!

Next on my list of books to buy; Sachin: The Story of the World's Greatest Batsman by Gulu Ezekiel

Folks, I'm confused really; there are 5 biographies published about this icon! Which one/s do I pick off the shelf? Any thoughts?

The big question

Stephen Hawking's thoughts in his latest book The Grand Design about God not necessarily being the initiator of creation evokes mixed reactions in me. That part of me, which believes in rationality urges my mind to rest on the belief that creation was just an event among other things in what is a continuous process, but the other side of mine that anchors upon faith refuses to come to terms with a belief that the existence of my person, and the many other prominent facts such as the perfect Earth-Sun distance, the just-about-right solar mass and most astonishingly, the optimum time of day and night among other things, are not merely as a result of coincidence or accident!

I'd like to believe that while the process of creation has been strongly aided by scientific mechanism, it has been also stalwartly processed and furthered by a force that remains to be reckoned! More importantly, I'd like to believe that I, like all of us human beings, co-creations here on Earth and within the many realms outside of our own planet are indeed part of an elaborately grand design, and could not have come to being from nothingness or chaos merely because some laws of physics govern the manner in which the universe and it's contents come to be!

Remembering Dr. Oppenheimer

Very few have, perhaps, endured the dichotomies of life as has J. Robert Oppenheimer, going from an absolutely iconic state to tragic infamy, in a succession of events that can at best be described as unfortunate and fateful!

Presently reading the biography of who is best known as the father of the American atom bomb, I'm given an opportunity to understand the mind of Dr. Oppenheimer, famously known for its complexities, as baffling as mathematical convolutions or the laws governing thermodynamics in physics! But the remarkably articulate and factual work of Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, free from any form of prejudice, or opinionated distortions, usually adopted by many a narrator, is a true classic, having arrived upon after a great deal of painstaking research compiled with immense meticulousness and detail for the reader to assimilate.

Titled American Prometheus - The triumph and tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, this booker prize winning work not only details, in outstanding simplicity, the life and times of Dr. Oppenheimer but also introduces the reader to a socio-political mindset, prevalent during what was perhaps the beginning of divisions in the world, as blocs, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, created purely on an ideological basis - a state of alignment that would last for decades, culminating into the Cold War.

Reading this book is quite like living a situation that is not very uncommon in today's world of speed success that dictates entities to plot against one another in a feverish attempt to 'climb the ladder,' of which, here, the protagonist falls victim to! I can safely say that this book is more than just an account of a person and his actions, or inactions as many historians would like to remark! To me, it is nothing short of an almanac of history, one that unmistakably outlines very many facts about how history was shaped and thereafter written and hence recognizable in the form that we know today!

Footnotes:

It was on this day in 1932 that the American physicist Carl David Anderson announced the discovery of the Positron, a fact earlier theorized by Dr. Oppenheimer in his paper titled "On the theory of electrons and protons."

Also on this day in 1939, scientists Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd wrote to then US President Franklin Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon. Dr. Oppenheimer would later serve as scientific director of the project.

Hello, Mr. Hawking

Just the other day I was intently watching a feature of Stephen Hawking on TV and couldn't help admiring the man for his profoundness in passion and the ability to dream outside permissible limits, such as for instance, time travel! He has always fascinated me, and that began several years ago, when I first read his very articulate account of the universe, space and time, titled 'A brief history of time,' which, most certainly, is a very authoritative text on the four dimensions that we surround our existence in!

It amazes me beyond imagination how someone so severely disabled, (by motor neurone disease also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS), continues to delve into the nuances of space and time with a sense of ease and passion like that employed by a child during it's course of play.

What is certainly commendable about him is his ability to transcend boundaries despite his massive incapacity! Sometime in early 2007, he became the first paralytic to undertake a zero gravity flight as a precursor to his sub-orbital flight in space, which I'm not sure has happened yet.

Perhaps, the two things I absolutely like about him are, among others, one, his belief that alien life does exist in other parts of the universe, and two, his answer to the question of 'What came before the Big Bang?' which he asserted was meaningless, when he compared it to asking 'What lies north of the North Pole?'

Made in Japan

make.believe

-- The vision that drives Sony Corporation

Inspiration comes from many sources, if only one can observe and absorb, that is!

One such resource is Made in Japan, autobiography of the famed Akio Morita, erstwhile head of the Sony Corporation, an organization that is synonymous for cutting edge quality and excellence!

The book is replete with instances of commitment, dedication, enthusiasm, innovation and perseverance, doses of which can be liberally adopted and replicated by all of us in our daily lives. The key, according to Morita, is discipline without which nothing can be made possible and with which there is nothing that can come to be impossible!

What is striking is the narrative itself, which is extremely simple, warm and very personal. It is a work of art that depicts the working of a very evolved mind that does what it loves the most, with a very strong sense of dedication and will power that has ensured what Sony is today!

For those of you who are looking for a very good add to your collection, this is a masterpiece and an absolute must read from which a lot of lessons can be well-learnt.

Footnotes:

Sony is presently a $79.6 billion enterprise employing over 180,500 people, with total assets of over $123 billion.

Excerpts from the epic

"When Brahma created living beings, he was filled with anxiety. 'These lives will multiply and soon their number will be beyond the capacity of the earth to bear. There seems to be no way of coping with this.' This thought of Brahma grew into a flame which became bigger and bigger until it threatened to destroy all creation at once.

Then Rudra came and pleaded for allaying this destructive fire. Brahma controlled the great fire and subdued it into the law that is known to mortals as Death. This law of the creator takes many forms, such as war or sickness or accident and keeps the balance between birth and death.

Death is thus an inescapable law of existence, ordained for the good of the world. It is not true wisdom to be impatient with Death or to grieve immoderately for those who die. There is no reason to pity those who pass away. We may have reason indeed to grieve for those who remain."

Footnotes:

I have presently completed reading the Mahabharata by C. Rajagopalachari and thought it apt to present this excerpt which moved me beyond anything that I have ever felt, known and heard! I feel unnecessary, and also grossly unqualified, to explain this simplest of truths any more than what has already been so wonderfully illustrated in this marvelous epic.

However, I have come to realize how true these words are, along with those others spoken at length, especially in the context of our lives in the present day!

The world in a page

They say, that as a child a library card takes you places, while as an adult a credit card does the same job! Well, the former part still holds true in my case and it so appears that there aren't a lot of stones unturned in my efforts to constantly dwell over my most prized hobby - reading, that is!

So, when I walked out of Higginbotham's a few days ago with armfuls of superbly serious literature on history, Indian jungles and statecraft, I felt a mad rush that could well be equated with the ecstatic high which almost always is a result of a very successful culmination of events in a way that the mind has envisaged and so desired, so often termed as picture-perfect!

Those who have cultivated this magnificent inclination, and a strong liking for it, will certainly agree that it is surely a matter of unrivaled pleasure to sink into a couch with an honorific possession, engaging with which can delightfully transport the reader into a world that is a lot more than just worth visiting!

Maybe that is precisely why I so emphatically agree with William Styron who rightly remarked that "A good book should leave you slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it."

Tipping Point

A world that follows the rules of epidemics is a very different place from the world we think we live in now.

Think, for a moment, about the concept of contagiousness. If I say that word to you, you think of colds and the flu, or perhaps something very dangerous like HIV or Ebola. We have, in our minds, a very specific, biological notion of what contagiousness means. But if there can be epidemics of crime or epidemics of fashion, there must be all kinds of things just as contagious as viruses.

Have you ever though about yawning, for instance? Yawning is a surprisingly powerful act. Just because you read the word "yawning" in the previous two sentences - and the two additional "yawns" in this sentence - a good number of you will probably yawn within the next few minutes.

Even as I am writing this, I've yawned twice. If you're reading this in a public place, and you've just yawned, chances are that a good proportion of everyone who saw you yawn is now yawning too, and a good proportion of the people watching the people who watched you yawn are now yawning as well, and on and on, in an ever widening yawning circle.

Footnotes:

Excerpts from the acclaimed Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, which is a highly intelligent and articulate account of how little things can make a big difference!

For those of you who are interested in understanding trends and the undercurrents that make them as powerful as shockwaves of an earthquake, this is the book to get hold of!

So, what really, is the Tipping Point?

Passers by in Life

Seasons and life have among themselves pretty much the same meaning, in the sense of how they further and remain a cyclical process. The same can be said about the elements of nature too! But when you add people to the equation, there is a vast change in the composition, something much like the law of entropy that was elucidated by Stephen Hawking in his famed Theory of Everything! And just in case you don't know what entropy is, go no further than understanding that it represents the "potential for disorder" in a system!

I spent a small part of the weekend reading In Spite of the Gods by Edward Luce, a book which is said to contain some of the finest analyses of India's strange economic and socio-political growth and tipped to be an insightful read by India's former Chief Executive - Dr. Abdul Kalam, among many others that is!

But that was momentary! As I sat trying to fixate my focus on the book, in the same park which is the venue of my once-in-a-while-solitary-walks, my eyes wandered in observation of people who had gathered there at sunset to either spend the remainder of the weekend in solace or as in the case of little ones - to be engulfed in the blissful togetherness of recreation! It seemed each one of them had a definite agenda in place for the evening to conduct!

Calm and composed, to me, each of them seemed to be engrossed in a journey of sorts - of comprehension, perception and anticipation, such as in wait for something that was to come and that no amount of preparation could help them face that seemingly oncoming blight, if one ever existed, that is!

I was then reminded of a quote, by Chuck Palahniuk that The Times of India carried yesterday morning, which read that "If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...... Would you slow down or speed up?"

A Mighty Heart

Dear Mariane

I trust this note of mine finds Adam and yourself doing well.

I'm not sure if I should ascribe my reading A Mighty Heart on Danny's birthday to an act of coincidence!

Every once a while, there come people, who call upon themselves, mustering unseen courage, to show the world the elements of truth and choose to be the exponents of this powerful virtue! One can gather in such an illustrious league the names of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, who lost their lives while relentlessly pursuing the Godly mission of upholding the values of truth and educating the world about it.

I believe Danny is part of this list of people-extraordinaire, someone who saw it as his job, not any extraordinary mission, to bridge a gap between fiercely opposing cultures and their people.

Your day by day account moved me a great deal while making me recall the early days of 2002 when I relied on the BBC to bring me the news of Danny’s release, which I believed was imminent. Extremely pained by this senseless killing, I comforted myself in the belief that heaven is certainly a better place, now that he’s gone up there!

Above all, he was himself, doing what he did best and martyred himself in the tedious and painful process of constantly demonstrating unity and togetherness to a world that calls itself civilized yet remains glaringly devoid of peace or the very understanding of it!

Like the millions of those who have read and understood the courage and sacrifice of A Mighty Heart, I want you to know how grateful I am to you for bringing this chilling account for me to read, which under ordinary circumstances would have been safely cast away in a mourning mind!

Today, we continue to celebrate Danny's life as an epic moment in history, one that has had many good associations and causes attached to it, and in doing so emphatically tell the perpetrators of terror that while good people and their bodies can be destroyed by their meaningless massacres in the name of religion - not once, ever, can they destroy the will of the spirit which is higher than any cause or effect!

Nothing will give me more pleasure than to see Adam grow up to fulfill his father's prophecy of being able to change the world!

I pray that you, Adam, Danny's family, friends and colleagues find renewed courage and strength to further your lives in living the legacy Danny left behind.

Nam Myoho Renge Kyo

Rakesh

Footnotes:

The Daniel Pearl Foundation

Books & Bliss

Nothing is more fun than reading a good book, to me at least! Known for leading a very boring life and being very happy at that, you can well imagine my joy when over the last weekend, I splurged generously over of a dozen titles from Crossword - quite a collection indeed, to keep me going for a while!

Already having planned the merriment, I hurriedly watched the much talked about produces of Quentin Tarantino and Ayan Mukerji, back to back, and lost little time in hastening to Crossword next door!

The comforting quiet, enthusiasts milling about and soft instrumental melody playing ceaselessly through overhead speakers made a welcome and relaxing ambience - one I chose to settle down in the cozy confines of, beginning a long and enjoyable hunt for what I'd soon make mine with a joyous, rather elated sensation combined with the immense sense of pride and privilege of being able to own them!

About two odd hours, a dozen books and a sizeable sum later, I walked out of Crossword a very happy man and with good reason to be!

Was it not Oscar Wilde who said that "It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it?"

The Pièce de résistance

Presently reading the acclaimed 'Autobiography of a Yogi' by Paramahansa Yogananda, I find myself in uncharted territory with a drawn feeling of how much more I need to strive in order to attain a level of self-realization which is a quart of what is talked about in this magnificent book!

It is a work of art like never before that I have ever encountered and is constantly helping me understand the deepest nuances of my life better than before with a singular view of how much life is a part of the whole exercise of evolving into a higher state of being and realm, which most of us ardently seek and yet fail to attain owing to focus on intellectual appeal and sensory judgements alone!

What strikes me most, even as I border close to just a half of the book, are the striking similarities that this book elucidates in it, also largely mentioned in the works of Dr. Brian Weiss, with respect to life itself and those of Carl Sagan with respect to his thoughts and deductions of the ever intriguing cosmos!

As if that wasn't already enough to stir my ordinary mind, beyond words and expression, the magical experiences detailed as a result of the author's process of attaining self-realization shook me off, challenging the earthly concepts of time, gravity, instances, all of which are a certainly delightful treat to any reader, food for thought, in the clichéd sense to say!

And as for my new-found realization that I have been toying for quite sometime now, I'd better best describe it with the aide of the famous words of the Greek philosopher Socrates which read that "True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing!"

Footnotes:

The Self Realization Fellowship - The Website

The online version of Yogananda's autobiography and the e-book on Project Gutenberg (under copyright)

Awarded

Fellow bloggers Shravan Raghunath and Rahul Sharma have given me the Awesome Blogger and Blog Buddies awards respectively, for which I express my sincere thanks! As always, I dedicate these awards to all of my fellow-bloggers, in my belief that this world, the virtual world of blogging, is one of instant intellectual connect, bridging gaps of culture, race, religion, borders and time. Therefore in celebration of a togetherness that I experience here in the blog-world, I extend these awards to all of you, the wonderful people who make this world happen!

Envisioning the future

The Earth has truly evolved along with all its inhabitants! It is lush green and more fertile than what it used to be! The environment is well balanced and free of any threats to it! It is truly a home, worth living in! There are no instances of pollution in any form.

The number of inhabitants, however, has drastically reduced with very few people and animals. They live in groups, at peace with one another, with a very high regard for the environment around them. They live in harmony, free from anger, hatred, confusion, disease, despair and sorrow! No traces of any negative energy exist!

People are in constant interaction with one another and live very content lives. Their focus is on intellectual development, education, arts, culture, heritage and the likes. In essence, there is a lot of emphasis on development, intellectual and spiritual. Strangely, physical attributes are not accorded much significance. This is a different realm, a higher level of consciousness altogether!

Most importantly, there is infinite peace and harmony like never before and a strong sense of contentment prevails.

This, my friends, is a vision of reality in the not so distant future of our planet and most importantly, our own lives!

It appears difficult to comprehend, but the possibility is very real! Take a few moments to envision in picture what you have read and experience the warmth that is associated with the thoughts!

Having said that, I'd like to draw your attention to the present, which is without doubt the most important aspect of our lives. How we live out our present will define the future that we desire and thus it is important to focus on the present more than the past and the future, which, in effect, have bygone and will emerge sooner in time, respectively!

Footnotes:

This is a reference to an original vision mentioned in one of the works of Dr. Brian L. Weiss, of whom I have written in the immediately preceding post! I have deliberately not included the subjects here or for that matter, the title of the book itself! Also, this post is not a verbatim replica of that mentioned in the book. I have read the contents of the book extensively and reproduced it here with the help of my cognitive imagination, purely for the sake of representation and visualization, since it greatly comforted me to do so, and was reasonably sure it would be of the same effect to many of you!