staying.cool

hmmm..

running down the road, not thinking, not seeing, simply exhilarating in the sheer power of the moving as fast as your legs can take you. the world moves past in a blur in which trees, hedges, grass, flowers, sky - they all blur into a continuous vision of green with patches where other details are registered, and yet not seen.
the road becomes a sheet of grey, and the feet barely seem to touch the ground as one picks up speed; exerting oneself, pushing yourself to the limits. the sky seems to have disappeared: after all, it is not possible to look up and run.
in the far distance, the horizon can be seen as a merging point for the ground and the sky - a place that it actually seems possible to reach.
a break in the ground looms ahead, it becomes clearer in a couple of seconds of movement; it is a ditch. involuntarily the legs tighten, the muscles ready themselves; and it is cleared by a mighty leap.
for a few seconds, in the air, it seems like you can fly.

could you feel it ? feel the power and exhilaration that enters the body when you push yourself ? go to the limits ?
the beauty of imagination is that you can think and picturize something forever, and yet never apply this ability when it really counts. the most important things in life are so easily attained if you could but attach a little bit of imagination to it. one has to do both: imagine as well as realize.
whatever one says, nothing is as good as doing it.

that is what i have to do too. the monsters that keep entering me, will have to be exorcised in the only way i know. visualized and hence controlled. i can never destroy them, they are a part of me, but i will have to learn to accept them; and hence, ironically, stop fighting them.

i don't know how many of you understood that. maybe my soul will connect to yours with these words and you might. maybe all this will completely go over your head, and you will put it down to a crazy guy ranting away at his blog.

maybe thats all it is.

hmmm.. reality faced me on the 21st of january.

which was incidentally my birthday.

a birthday is meant to be a day of celebration.. a day that you have fun.. a day to refresh yourself, to give yourself strength for a new year ahead.
and yet, mine was more a day of realization for me.

from the presents and wishes that i got from my family, to the greetings and mails from my friends; to the comments i got on the blog: each and every one was an eye-opener for me.
i realized that i affect people's lives.
i change the way people think. people feel. even the way they live.

its a theory that i have long expounded on this blog.
but not one that i have seen in real life, in such a major way.
friends, family, acquaintances, soulmates.. all of them showed me that i matter to them. that i have made a difference in each of their lives. in some small way.
in some small way.
and yet, i never really realised it.

that small way was enough to make big differences in each of their lives.

and that's when i realised that i too had been affected by them, that all of them had also made differences in my life. they have changed the way i think, the way i behave, the way i feel, even the way i live.
amazing.

life is supposed to be a mesh of connections that we form whenever we connect with someone, or even something. the invisible connections that bind us all together are still strong. they are still quivering with the many thoughts that bind us.

and this is still happening. even now. this minute. this second. one is actually being formed between you and me.

i could feel the mesh alive and vibrant around me, stimulating me, enlivening me on that day.
it was like getting reborn.

thank you to all those who've given me back my faith in your own way. you know who you are, and the connection between us will remain as strong as ever.

the best part is that it showed me that life is still worth it. there is a better chance of there being a point to it all.

at least, i have hope.

hmmm.. is it possible to see and yet be blind ?

very often, we close ourselves to what is seen in front of us. we close our mind from the realization of what is happening. or what can happen.
or even people who make things happen for us.
and we will not accept it.

we keep trying to run away from this life as though that were possible. as though just not thinking of it, not acknowledging it will make it all better and make all the bad things go away.
when that tsunami struck, we all were struck in our shoes. as though by lightening. and then we proceeded to help them in any way we could.
did we even try to analyze what we thought, what went on through our heads when that happened ?

“there, but for the grace of God, go i.”
and then, feeling guilty, we gave and gave. and tried to arouse that concern in everyone.
nothing wrong in that. but do this because you want to, or because you care. not because the joneses' did it. or because you get plagued by these feelings of guilt.

accept that you are human.
why is that we cannot accept this ? and live life like one ? why keep trying to be like some kind of God ?
accept that you have faults. accept that you can improve and try to. don't keep trying to act like you are some kind of divine being who cannot have faults, and who has to be the one.
when it comes to children too, we must try to “protect them”. save their innocence. for all their life ?!
crap.

i agree upto a point. but then one cannot be a “babe in the woods” all the time in the world we live in.
the world is not a nice place. accept it. and try to make the child understand the difference in good and evil. simply exposing it to only the good things in life is not a solution.
the power of choice is one that we all had. allow everyone this freedom.
but then that means one accepts responsibility for one's actions. you make a choice to do something, it means that if anything goes wrong you will be held responsible.

this is the way that we have made the world today. whether fortunate or unfortunate is just a matter of perception.
but since we've made it this way, it means that we accept that we did what we did.
we might have screwed up in some places.

but its not an experience to miss.

not for me.

Inspired by: The Village

hmmm…sometimes i wonder..

i know i generally wonder about many things.
but i couldn't come up with a suitable beginning for the post.:-D

the weird thing is that i seem to be wondering about a lot of stuff these days. the brain sees something and starts analysis, reasoning, and well, basically; thinking.
a coupla things come to mind.
1. am i unique in this ?
2. is it all worth that much thought ?

that may sound a bit egotistic. but, that's frankly what i have been thinking about for a coupla days now.
for whatever reasons, i seem to be giving too much thought to things that shouldn't really take up this much “processing” time, so to speak. i don't see it happening as much in other people's blogs/lives.
and i see no relation between wondering about the universe and medical imaging.
for those not in the know, the latter is what i am doing in aberdeen.
or is just that i have that much free time on my hands?

but then i am not doing this in my free time. anytime i am, like living, its like i am thinking about the many things i keep discussing here.
i know, i know, i think too much.

the other thing that occurs to me is that, if no-one else does any of this, it might mean that all this is not worth the thought. just accept what goes on, and live life the way it goes.
no.

an answer comes.
i do it maybe because not enough do it.
i do it because someone has to.
i do it because i cannot accept that life is just this way, and one lives the way its dished out to you.

i do it because i must.

i cannot live life like everyone else. i have to be unique, i have to think:
i have to live while understanding.
this is me. i have to figure out why. i have to understand what its all about. i have to figure out the reason that i'm here.

maybe that's the reason i'm here.

hmmm.. its a belaboured point about the fact that when we grow up, we lose something.

a very important something.
but can we really help that?

i am talking about the magic that we see as a child.
the magic that transforms any kind of running into that of 'the flash'. jumping on the bed into scaling skyscrapers. G.I.Joe into rootin' tootin' sharpshootin' heroes. where one can move between castles and deserts, dungeons and landscapes in the blink of an eye. all the playacting, all the imagination that we have as a child. where anything seems possible. where everyone is willing to play along with your fantasy that you are indeed robin hood.

and yet, at 22, if i pretend that my room is actually the secret lair of dr. doom, i'll probably be taken to the mental asylum. if not repriminded severely. or even worse, laughed at.
and hence we are forced to shift that beautiful anything-is-possible world to our dreams. to our inner mind.
basically, as we grow older, we are not allowed to play.
which is probably why we like to be with kids. we can relive those times so easily, and no-one is there to forbid us.
that is so sad.

after seeing 'the matrix' for the first time, i would enact the slow motion fights. however, this had to be done behind closed doors, far from the madding crowd. who in all probability would have called me mad.
mad, maybe. but i preferred this form of madness to the madness of being called 'grown-up'.
am i just running from my responsibilities ? from growing up ?
i don't know.

there is a scene in 'finding neverland', where Barrie tells one of the children that in the last 30 seconds he's grown up. that the boy has disappeared.
he hates that.

i hate it too. i hate being told that i have to grow up. big deal if i have to, but that does not mean that i have to lose being a child. that i have to lose my imagination. when anything is possible.
i know that its not neccessary to lose anything when one grows up. but thats the way we make it.
“you can't do that until you're older.” “when you're older, you'll understand and won't do it again.” “grow up!”
and so on.

must we really convince children that growing up is so much fun ? that growing up means that you can experience so many more things than as a child. i remember feeling more than once that i should grow up.
luckily, various experiences showed me that i needn't. and saved, at least in part, my childhood in me.

how do i know this ? yesterday, when walking home in the gale that weirdly seemed to start up as i left college, i started fighting the wind demon. the one who was trying to vanquish me, zamman, the last hero left on earth.

man… that was fun.

Inspired by: 'Finding Neverland'

hmmm.. life is such a fleeting thing, that one never realizes that it's gone.
and when it is, one cannot realize what one has missed.

i have mentioned many times, that one never really knows about life, and about how temporary it seems. how it just seems to disappear.
and yet, one cannot realize what it is really all about.
and no, i am not talking about the hokey-pokey.

it takes something called death for us to realize what life is.
it is only when we have lost something that we realize that it was there in the first place.
if this is the case with life itself, i wonder if this is the case with so many other things.
i am not asking what is the point of the matter, it is something i have asked many times before, and something that i will keep asking. just to ground myself in reality.

could it be that we are not meant to realize it all ? that the universe cannot take the collective mental energy of us all thinking about the same goddamn thing ? and thus, we have been cursed to live in ignorance ?
or maybe, ignorance is really bliss.
as in, its only when we will stop realizing, that we will truly understand.
possible ?
that's the beauty of contradictions. they always seem possible.

is it also possible that love does not exist ? that love itself is something that holds value only in life ? that love will be destroyed when it's all over ?
that love is as transient as all the rest of it ?

think about it. in a few hundred years, will our lives really be worth the time we spend over them ? will all the love that we keep “spreading” be worth even the amount of thought that we expend on it daily ?
maybe that's why we are meant not realize anything until we lose it all.

i know that we have taken love and God as two things that will always remain.
but if that's not true, we are all very very screwed.

and if it is, then keep thinking. i guess the end (referred to above) has to come sooner or later..

anyone to contradict ?

laterz