Does your life come with a manual? Do you know what’s going to happen to you? Do you want to break free? Do you want to dance the dance? No, I didn’t venture into a meditation retreat business, nor am I a counsellor. I am just trying to follow the homilies that we read every day, the bombardment of all the motivational, inspirational, positive, feel-good quotes, my WhatsApp, Instagram feed is filled with all these feel-good quotes ranging from Winnie the Pooh to couplets, to lines by Buddha to simple yet deep lines that always tell me to be chin up.
I feel that with so much positivity hitting me every day, I feel I should have a rainbow coming out of my backside and leprechaun’s gold! It’s not that I don’t appreciate these pick me ups but pardon me I am tired of being told by these forwards, what about genuine, honest writing or picking up a phone to talk to each other. Why have we started being unkind to each other in real life but on the virtual world we are the portrait of kindness and magnanimity! How come we don’t follow what we are preaching? These lines, the Sufi sayings, the Urdu couplets, the sayings by the great masters have been there before you and I and have been said, quoted since time immemorial. Its like we are hiding behind these emojis, these lines, our true selves the emoji is so dangerous; it could be a psychopath murderer or it could be a serial killer or just plain old constipated one!!
I think my grouse is that we have started alienating ourselves and masking ourselves by sending these quotes thinking that is the answer to any problem. Today I was teaching the children as I had stumbled upon an old Aesop fable book and all the stories had morals (you guessed it, right!). The simple stories all were teaching the children who were oblivious of this virtual world that was plaguing us all is that we should be wise enough to follow our heart. One that struck the chord of my heart was, a fool flatters himself, but a wise one flatters the fool. This is what we need to learn, to be wise and spate the chaff from the grain to succeed where it matters.
No one is going to worry if your selfie game is strong, or how many likes you get, or whether you have the best body, these all are fleeting when one needs to remember the traits of yesteryears and embrace reality and kindness. Let the simple traits come forward that have been inculcated into the grain of our society that was the ethos, and gives it an airing just the way I did to the books that I found today.
Maybe, if this article made a difference, I could give this a go rather than agriculture that isn’t paying at all. Potatoes aren’t making the cut in the vegetable market these days.
