ODE TO JOY




“If your heart is a volcano,

how shall you expect flowers to bloom?”

Unknown

 

My friend, and a fellow-learner in our Tai Chi group, Venkat, had shared this gem, one Monday morning:

‘Written on the board of a cemetery:

“A LOT OF THE FELLOWS HERE BELIEVED, 

THAT THE WORLD, OR SOME PART OF THE WORLD, 

COULDN’T RUN WITHOUT THEM.”

  

This friend of mine is in his mid-forties. Apparently, he and his wife had made a conscious decision, early during their married life, that they would stop working before they were forty… Would have reasonable amount of savings… No children to raise… A few simple (crumpled but clean) clothes to wear, and, above all, backpack to every remote corner of our country and some neighbouring ones. So, they have been, literally, living their lives without any baggage… 


 (My friends Venkat and Priya presently backpacking at Kumta-Belekhan-Gokarna trek.)


Well, to most of us, such a life seems either an ideal or outright idiotic. So, while you and I are still frantically working and try saving, with the hope, that, ‘one day’, we shall be going around the countryside smelling flowers and touching stars, my friend and his wife, are already doing it… And, most probably, our ‘one-day-we-shall-be…’ dreams may remain only that -  ‘dreams’. Pipe dreams!

A lot of frills and concerns only complicate our lives. They rob our ability to walk alive… What my friend and his wife have done is a conscious choice to make their lives free from frills and concerns. If not fully, but, significantly…

Yes, the conscious choice is the key. This key, I think, gives us the courage to leave alone that terrible noise called  -  ‘What-would-they-say?’

And we know, what an inner strength that is! How peaceful when we think, that we all are dispensable!

Therefore, shall we smell the flowers and touch the stars before they fade?

 




GERALD D/CUNHA

Pic's.: Venkat & Priya

Video: 1. A. M. Goudarzi 2. MANNA

 

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