Reflections!!!

Moving on is a good thing… I always believed that this one word moving on is a very powerful one. Helps you get over anything and everything. But like over exploitation of anything leads to destruction, so does moving on.

Today was one of those great realisation days for me as I went into a flash back and replayed the past few years of my life. And I realized how easily I had forgotten a lot of things, along with bad ones. Things that really mattered to me and gave me an amazing feeling. Feelings, emotions that changed or matured over the years. Not that maturing or changing is bad, just that it lost the innocence or essence of freshness.

Made me wonder why we do not feel the same way about people, things, and situations always. We often tend to forget the struggle, the pain and the hard work that earned us all the good things and people in our life. Even so that we tend to forget the success or accomplishments of our careers, ventures, interests.  As time passes, we all forget what it took for us to achieve that one thing that was so important to us one upon a time.

Sometimes, our over-indulgence in petty things prevent us from looking at our precious people or things around us to the extent of losing them. Why do we get so carried away? What is that prevents us from looking at these thing? Why do we not realise and straighten ourselves in time. A little retrospection of your past can do wonders for you. 

So take this time out today for yourself to reflect on matters close to your heart. Take out those old albums, letters, trinkets from the past memoirs today and dust them out. Revive those moments of pleasure before they go out of reach, before they die out. 

Keeping up with your present is and foraging ahead out in future is necessary, but don’t mind to reflect back once in a while to the times of which you have only memories of or even to get a glimpse of your own reflections in those times. it help you save a relationship, a habit or even give you back some of your glorious days back. And if none of this happens, believe me it will definitely bring back a smile from olden times.
http://anuhv.blogspot.com/2015/05/reflections-moving-on-is-good-thing-i.html

Being Selfish ain’t that bad

Recently I read a woman quoting that she was really proud of her daughter because her daughter apparently reacted to a certain video as Selfish. That was followed by a long list of other parents praising her on her upbringing and went on to vent how well she had raised her child by inculcating such values. 

This all somehow disturbed me and a whole churning of thoughts started at the back of mind. Why exactly do people, parents particularly, take pride in showcasing how well they have raised their kids by teaching them that selfishness is a deterrent, an offense, almost a taboo for some.

Is this not somehow hurting the generations that we nurtured?  Think about others, don’t think only about yourself. Don’t do things because some may else may be offended.  I am nowhere propagating that we should be selfish at the cost of others righteous self. But is it not their own duty to guard their own happiness or wellness. It’s everybody’s individual responsibility, isn’t it?

Aren’t we somehow creating our next’s to be a clone of ourselves. The same features in a different body, which may be not compliment the personality of that particular individual. As if, we are trying to push clothes of our choice in a wardrobe which is meant to fit some other kinds of clothes.  

Every parent tries to teach their children a set of values, thoughts, beliefs that were passed on to them by their parents or the ones they have come to embrace as their own.

Being unselfish is also one of these many that our parents have dumped on to ours, without considering whether they suit our lifestyle, personality, or environment. Having said that, I myself have spent almost half of my life being, unselfish, too much sacrificing. Almost believing that choosing myself over others should make be guilty of that huge crime that I have committed.

Learning from all this, I started debating with myself that aren’t we somehow by teaching our children to be unselfish, inculcating in them the value of pleasing others, sometimes society as a whole, by being unselfish?  To be accepted as a part of the society by pleasing them, to be one among the crowd. Are we so vulnerable, weak to be able to distinguish ourselves from rest of the crowd by doing our own little things in our way? Or to be more precise, to be selfish.  All of this lead me to word, I had come cross from a book I read some time ago and been tolling about since then, “Second-handers”.  The word clearly refers to someone who have been living their lives to be accepted part of the society, to be praised by the society and being afraid of being outcast by them.

Have we ever stopped for a while and thought about why it should be important to be accepted by a society, which itself doesn’t know where it is heading, which has its own set of biases.

Can we not be courageous enough to break from these shackles and rise up above all these false pretence? And be ourselves and being a little selfish.

let's do our bit

15th August is approaching again and we will be celebrating our Independence Day tomorrow. And there will be patriotic songs playing on radio and TV. Also I see a lot of people around me posting messages all over, flashing flags as theirs dps,.. And like every year, a question kept hitting me hard, “Why is it that we always remember to remember our country on this day?”(reminds me of going to a temple on a chaturthi or mahashivratri).  Or is this the only way, we can provide service to our country. And I don’t mean here to offend people celebrating this day in any way. But I keep thinking to myself, what is it that we can do to prove our love and respect towards our country? What is it that we need to do or should be doing that is patriotic? Of course, we can’t do anything more than what our soldiers are doing for us at the borders. But there is something, we can do that is not any less than that.

First and foremost, let’s not bribe or accept bribe. There will be municipal corporations to clean up your society or surroundings, but why litter in the first place. We love to show off so much of our culture in front of people of other nationality, so why not make them feel the same warmth by keeping our city clean, not writing on wall of our historic monuments or by not letting them get cheated at the hands of local goons. Preserve our culture in the most authentic way and not corrupting it by using unfriendly environmental ways, be it noise, water or air pollution (and certainly not by playing a munni badnam hui in front of a Ganesh pandal :P). Instilling in our children the right values, which unquestionably doesn’t include settling down in a foreign country for money while robbing India of its talent pool and productive workforce. Inculcating the pride of being an Indian in them so that they feel obliged to be a part of the development of our country in every way.  Though Indian values certainly do not mean the orthodox, preposterous and insensitive traditions that are followed in some parts of our country. Ah, the list is long, and a lot to do and this is the least that we can do.

I believe the listed ones are some of the ways in which we can contribute to our society and country as a whole. What is that you believe would be a better example of patriotism? Let us think hard today and not only list down but also implement them and contribute in any small / big way that we can.

After all, this is OUR COUNTRY too, not just that of a SOLDIER.

Let’s do our bit

AHV