Beauty
October 7th, 2006
And I moved my face closer, the rose petal, shimmering in the redness of health, bent near the edges like a child streching his arms after having woken up from a deep sleep, smelling of diving fragrance, filled most of my view. A lone dew-drop, lying confused on its silky skin, reflected my captivated presence on its silvery, transparent surface. As I moved my head a little sideways, the surface of the drop of liquid shone in the brilliance of a dazzling array of colours as it captured the might and the heat of sun in her humble existence. Queer, isn't it? The fact that something as small and insignificant as a drop of water is sufficient to express the complete beauty of something as harsh as the Sun. You can never realize that beauty by looking directly at it. It does not reflect from the surfaces of rivers and oceans. No amount of power can extract that miniscule colourful beauty from its severe heat and light. And yet. Give it the soft touch of the curves of a dew drop and it melts into a beautiful play of colours. As the wind picked up speed, the rose petal started quivering. The dew drop, now helpless and confused, tried to hold her spot against the inevitable but finally gave up and fell off on the ground below. And all that remained on the surface was a faint and intermittent streak of water.
I waited for some more time and when that streak also vanished into thin air, I decided to move on.
Reminds me of the saying:
Apne hi pani mein pighalna barf ka muqqadar hota hain.
These days the beauty in the smallest of things escapes the eyes of most of us, who are in perpetual search of a bigger and instant gratification.
Namaste Khattebaj ji! Aapke tashreef le jane ke baad se ye orkut suna-suna sa reh gaya hai.
@Anurup : Exactly... Most of us just don't get it. I mean, is life even worth living if you are not happy atleast most of the time. And really. It does not take much to be happy. And it does not take much to be sad. Unfortunately, most of us choose the worng way.
@Amitesh : Aur Orkut se tashreef le jaane ke baad jeevan mein ek void aa gaya hai :-)... Itna saara khaali samay hai ki samajh nahin aata kya karoon 🙂
Anurup: look at this site:
http://www.fabaudrey.com
simply brilliant...
Your original post was deadly, but I don't agree with your comment about 'being happy'.
Of what things we derive happiness depends on our wisdom, which cannot be gained except through pain! To be able to derive happiness from all the so called small/'insignificant in the bigger picture' things, we are not supposed to be searching for them. At the same time, in the words of a better man than most of us, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Thus leading us to the confusion: how do we 'examine' correctly without wisdom?
"And really. It does not take much to be happy. And it does not take much to be sad. Unfortunately, most of us choose the worng way."
Well said! My doubt is, do we consciously choose?
"The unexamined life is not worth living." - X
The problem starts exactly here. Whereas the statement might be true, most our problems start when we try to mould our life according to others' expectations. Discontent arises when we try to follow the path of an enlightened man (or a 'successful' man) and we do not really measure up to his achievements. I am pretty sure that Van Gogh, although always broke in his life, was as contented a person as say Bill Gates or Socrates or Vivekanand. And the reason for his happiness was not that he had examined life but that he did not really care for it and for what others thought he should do.
So my point is, strive from wisdom, examine life, but only if you want to. Not because someone said you should. It might sound pompous coming from my inexperience but I honestly believe that there is no use going through that pain of attaining wisdom if I don't feel like it.
On your second point, the problem, I feel, is the saying that "the path to success is wrought with difficulties". Now most of us (including me) never give a thought about what success (in a particular field) means to them and do they even want it. They follow the pre-established notions of success and fret at the difficulties enroute. And this happens when we do make a conscious choice :-). Subconscious always wants us to choose what we like best. If we follow it, maybe we won't feel the difficulties. So, as far as I can think, we always consciously choose the sad path :-).
I don't know what makes you so confident about Van Gogh's being content with his life, may be you are right, but may be you are wrong too! And when I used the quote by Socrates, I was giving an 'example", not an "expectation".
Discontent arises when we unable to reconcile failure. At the basic level, discontent is a result of our greed (expecting more than what we deserve). Understanding this and getting rid of greediness is 'getting wise' to a small extent. Now whether you want to be so or not is upto you alone, that desire can not be imposed by literary activities. As for trying to follow someone else, we did not invent the wheel, but nothing stopped us from using it right?
Now to the subconscious part, I think that it is plain bull! What we term difficulties are the things that we are not prepared for, so the only good thing about chosing something on a whim and crediting it to your subconscious is that it offers you the excuse to be foolhardy, without any questions about your intelligence.
I never knew your quote was from Socrates!!!
Nevertheless, your thinking is fundamentally different from mine in most of the fields. So this activity seems to be pretty futile.
don't tell me you were expecting another "one-form" debate
The "one form" debate was the only one which finally got resolved. And how? We were speaking the same freaking thing 🙂