Let there be Light...!

 

Truth...?

‘Speak the truth even if your voice shakes…’ 

is an idealistic virtue; 

when your sheer existence shakes 

as the practical consequence of speaking the truth, 

doesn’t it become a vice…?

"What's the world's greatest lie?" 

the boy asked, completely surprised.

"It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, 

we lose control of what's happening to us, 

and our lives become controlled by fate. 

That's the world's greatest lie..."

- The Alchemist

Learning...!

"Real confidence is about modeling ongoing learning. What if, instead of spending our lives doing, doing, doing, performing, performing, performing, we spent more time exploring, asking, listening, experimenting, reflecting, striving and becoming? What if we each always had something we were working to improve? What if we created more low-stakes islands and waters? And what if we got clear, within ourselves and with our teammates, about when we seek to learn and when we seek to perform, so that our efforts can become more consequential, our improvement never-ending and our best even better?"

The Million Dollar Question here is, can we spare the time to explore, ask, listen, experiment, reflect, strive and become and above all learning the lessons that we can keep... while we continue to run the rat race which nobody 'wins' anyways...? Huh...?

Happy Guru-Purnima... Way to go!

Empathy...!

"And in these dangerous and unsure times, 
in the midst of it all, I think
the thing that we have to hold on to is other people.

And I know that is a small thing
made up of small moments, 
but I think it is one tiny, tiny sliver of light
in all the darkness..."

Motherhood...!

"If we want a brighter future, we have to build it now in the dark times so that one day we can live in the light." That's what social justice work is, and that's what mothers do. We act in the present with an idea of the future that we want to bring about.' 

'...people ask me all the time how I deal with the suffering that I see in my work in refugee camps and disaster zones, and I think of my mom and that seed of possibility that she planted in me. Because, when you believe that something good is coming and you're part of making it happen, you start to be able to see beyond the suffering to how things could be...'

'They did what mothers do: they saw themselves as the solution and they took action...' 

"Justice is what love looks like in public." And when we remember that every policy is an expression of social values, love stands out as that superstar value, the one best able to account for the most vulnerable among us. And when we position love as a kind of leading edge in policy making, we get new answers to fundamental social questions, like, "What's the economy for?" "What is our commitment to those in the path of the hurricane?" "How do we greet those arriving to our borders?"

'Because you know that migration, just like mothering, is an act of hope. Thinking like a mother is a tool we can all use to build the world we want...!'

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!

Purpose...!

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman,
'Where's the self-help section?'
She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

Isn’t it true for everything that we do to be happy?
If we do what we do as a habit and it has stopped making us happy long back, isn’t it defeating the purpose?

Isn’t it burning like a candle that seems to glow outwardly, 
While shortening the thread within that is being burnt?
What purpose does that little short-lived illumination serve?

Shouldn’t we make most of this 'pause' to re-examine our decisions and lives, by seeking answers to two simple questions –

Is it all worth it and 
At the cost of what...?

Imminent...?

There is absolutely nothing in Nature to suggest that it cares more about Homo sapiens, which is Human species, more than it does about Daffodils. We the Humans would someday become extinct as easily and in no time just like many other species that became extinct in front of our eyes. All its children are equal for Mother Nature. Whenever a threat is posed to Nature’s Balance, it finds a way to counter it at any cost for sure.

If and when we, the people, become the reason for any such imbalance (which we are already since ‘development’ has shifted its gear and is fueled by ‘technological advancements’) Nature will take its corrective course and will not care to show more affection towards Michael Angelo, Shakespeare or Mozart than she will show for Daffodils.

We are playing with a supreme power which itself is life (which is omnipresent and which is the manifestation of energy that could neither be generated nor destroyed only conserved), such a power about which our knowledge is almost Zero. All we know about that Supreme Power called Nature is that it doesn’t discriminate between the species.

Let us Be Aware and Change our Ways before Mother Nature changes Hers...!