Don’t just have career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order. There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup. There is no fun in driving a car if your back hurts. Shopping is not enjoyable if your mind is full of tensions.
"Life is one of those races in nursery school where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same is with life where health and relationships are the marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die. …
One thing about nurturing the spark - don't take life seriously. Life is not meant to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? …
It's ok, bunk a few classes, scoring low in couple of papers, goof up a few interviews, take leave from work, fall in love, little fights with your spouse. We are people, not programmed devices........." :)
"Don't be serious, be sincere."!!
- taken from a speech from Chetan Bhagat
Full article can be found here
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Bon Voyage to Scandinavian - from my heart
Distances seemed so innocuous before. In the past two months, distances have embedded their own reality in my being. Distances, which separate me. Into parts inside and across miles outside.
Journeys made across borders. On land. Inside minds. It is true that I have travelled. I would like to follow that up by saying, "I've arrived" and maybe it will sound regal and pompous. But it would also be hideously untrue. Truth is very important here, and almost as overrated as love. And without either I am equally lost.
What has my world come to and what is it now. Let me try to put it in words. It all began with a search for dreams. Dreams which define a life. My life. The building blocks of this search involved a lot of wandering, and I being the starry eyed wanderer I am, embarked on the voyage with a missionary zeal.
Soon the coast faded away, and the light from the lighthouse dwindled in the distance. Almost as soon, a new coast appeared to take its place. A place of magic, of painterly picturesque allure and of quiet. A quiet so enveloping that it drowned me within. Almost. A boat navigating the rapids gets dealt its share of blows. It is lucky though, to be afloat. Somewhere, Someone smiles.
New authority, and a new time. My world got remodeled without my consent. I was not only helpless to say no, I was also supposed to like the new decor. I did. I learned to bend. Over, under and inside out. The mind flitted back to familiar coasts, oscillating between the chosen dream and the forsaken reality.
Want. Unceasing bouts of emotion. My perceptions changed faster than the world around me. There were no ground truths, no basis for measurements, no frames of reference. Only the quiet inside, and outside. Decisions made in split seconds of reason pockmarked the face of my teen aged existential angst. The contrast was burning, like a Van Gogh canvas. It scorched its mark deep.
Voices sailed across. From afar. Simple voices. Those that I was born to. Voices that sang my life to tunes that I have composed, but those that I cannot sing. The quiet receded like a wave shying away from the shore. With an unspoken promise of returning soon.
What one journey takes away, can another return? Are all journeys across distances, or are some simply across time? Take the two together, and its like asking can one travel back into the past? Can I meet myself, and if I do, can I break out of this recursion?
Faces loved since the birth of time light up with unbridled joy. A journey purpose served. The quiet stands, hidden in the shadows. Watching. Waiting. As voices from afar seep through its cold walls and gush out nearby. The flow whets the parched clay. Forms take shape in memory's misty lanes. The form of chosen dreams.
Dreams, which call anew across distances. Is it wise to embark again? Uncertain love and undefined truth. Still I dare. Why? Because, without either I'll forever be lost. Stranded across distances I cannot fathom.
So I step. Step out, and step in. One step a lifetime.
After all, I can die only once
Journeys made across borders. On land. Inside minds. It is true that I have travelled. I would like to follow that up by saying, "I've arrived" and maybe it will sound regal and pompous. But it would also be hideously untrue. Truth is very important here, and almost as overrated as love. And without either I am equally lost.
What has my world come to and what is it now. Let me try to put it in words. It all began with a search for dreams. Dreams which define a life. My life. The building blocks of this search involved a lot of wandering, and I being the starry eyed wanderer I am, embarked on the voyage with a missionary zeal.
Soon the coast faded away, and the light from the lighthouse dwindled in the distance. Almost as soon, a new coast appeared to take its place. A place of magic, of painterly picturesque allure and of quiet. A quiet so enveloping that it drowned me within. Almost. A boat navigating the rapids gets dealt its share of blows. It is lucky though, to be afloat. Somewhere, Someone smiles.
New authority, and a new time. My world got remodeled without my consent. I was not only helpless to say no, I was also supposed to like the new decor. I did. I learned to bend. Over, under and inside out. The mind flitted back to familiar coasts, oscillating between the chosen dream and the forsaken reality.
Want. Unceasing bouts of emotion. My perceptions changed faster than the world around me. There were no ground truths, no basis for measurements, no frames of reference. Only the quiet inside, and outside. Decisions made in split seconds of reason pockmarked the face of my teen aged existential angst. The contrast was burning, like a Van Gogh canvas. It scorched its mark deep.
Voices sailed across. From afar. Simple voices. Those that I was born to. Voices that sang my life to tunes that I have composed, but those that I cannot sing. The quiet receded like a wave shying away from the shore. With an unspoken promise of returning soon.
What one journey takes away, can another return? Are all journeys across distances, or are some simply across time? Take the two together, and its like asking can one travel back into the past? Can I meet myself, and if I do, can I break out of this recursion?
Faces loved since the birth of time light up with unbridled joy. A journey purpose served. The quiet stands, hidden in the shadows. Watching. Waiting. As voices from afar seep through its cold walls and gush out nearby. The flow whets the parched clay. Forms take shape in memory's misty lanes. The form of chosen dreams.
Dreams, which call anew across distances. Is it wise to embark again? Uncertain love and undefined truth. Still I dare. Why? Because, without either I'll forever be lost. Stranded across distances I cannot fathom.
So I step. Step out, and step in. One step a lifetime.
After all, I can die only once
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