Gerald D'Cunha

  “Anxiety is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do; but, it doesn’t get you very far.” Jodi Picoult   I know, beyond a certain point, it is futile – even senile – to worry about the future. Still, like everyone else around me, anxiety about my future doesn’t spare me. At no stage in my life – of 65 years – there was an ‘anxiety- mukt ’ time… I had something to be anxious about in my teens and I have something to be anxious about in my mid-sixties… I worried abut many things while I was a bachelor, and I worry about so many things when I am a family man, now. Good health or bad health, no money or more money… let me tell you this: Life never seems free from worrying! Am I generalizing here? I believe, I am not. What we ‘know’ and what we ‘do’ – are different… I am quite sure about it. For example, I know, that living in the present moment is the key to reduce - and even get free from - our anxiety. I write about it in my blogs… and strongly encoura...

A gentleman shared this wise thought in one of the WhatsApp groups I belong to: “Quarantine the media for 14 days and 80% of our problems will go away.”   Instantly, a dozen fellow-members in the group responded with thumbs-up. Of course, that statement made pure sense. But, then, I wondered: How many things can we quarantine from our life? Every WhatsApp group or other social media group I belong to, is bombarded with forwards, and about 99% of them is utter rubbish! The members who had greeted the statement with instant thumbs-up were the ones who have been blindly forwarding the rubbish stuff, round the clock, and round the year! So, which ‘media’ have we to quarantine for 14 days?   Obviously, the statement is referring to the relentless TV news! But, when we shut the TV, the ‘crap’ still comes from our own li’l mobile screens, you see… Therefore, just as we shut the windows before the night falls, so to keep the mosquitoes away when we go off to sleep...

“You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts, You may house their bodies but not their souls. For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”     -       Kahlil Gibran on Children W hen all this Boys’ and Girls’ Locker-room controversy is raging outside, when all and sundry are sitting on their judgement seats and handing out their verdicts on the ‘guilty’… I start wondering if there were ‘locker rooms’ while I was a young school boy… If dirty thoughts passed through my mind and if I and some of my friends chatted our private stuff. Horrible thoughts do pass through my mind even now… The locker room is still there, very much there. Am I alone here? Hope I am not… None of the so-called ‘dirty thoughts’ come in a young one from his parents and teachers. Mine did not come from my parents or teachers. So, let’s stop blaming abo...

Pic.: Bhusahn Thakkar   S ometime back, my friend, Dr. Deepak, in his Blog Post, shared with us a wonderful story. It was about the fishermen in Japan, who went into deep seas to catch fish. It took for them days to return to the shore. So, in order to bring home fish alive and fresh, these fishermen would erect huge water-tanks on board. And, to doubly ensure that fish remained alive till they hit the shore, they would put a couple of big sharks into the water-tanks! When I first read this story on Dr. Deepak’s Post, I remember how my heart had smiled! “Hey, I know who the fishes here are,” I remember my heart saying, “I know who the fisherman is… and who the sharks are!” Yesterday, my younger brother told me this: “If my daily challenges and problems were not present in my life, I don’t think, I would have got up early today, come to work and perform it the way I am doing now.” Then he added, “I don’t think I would even believe in Go...