MAN AND THE LEAF

The wind was furious and the rain gods were pelting down mercilessly. The flora and fauna we all know for its tranquility, was livid. The harmless leaf, struggled to cling on to the branch. The petite leaf had the courage to fight the threatening feats of nature. Hanging in there, facing the brunt, determined to fight all odds. The gust of wind was harsh and tore the leaf away from the branch, and it landed in the water.

Now the leaf has given up and is married to the motion of the water. It goes where the water flows. Lifeless, listless it just flows with the silent and calm water. The serenity is indicative of the eerie silence before a storm.

Somewhere nature and mankind converge. Nature has its own nuances which indicate a freakish similarity in the way we all live today. There is a hardened corporate world where we struggle everyday to maintain our sanity and stand by what we believe. We struggle everyday to reason out the rationale of our activities only to realize that sometimes you cannot overpower the system you operate in. The system has been built over the years by thoroughbred professionals and cannot be overthrown overnight.

This holds true for all walks of life. When we are young, energetic and raw, we enter the so called hardened corporate world with Utopian views and an opinionated personality. We come without any baggage and are daring enough to stand up for what we believe is right irrespective of business dynamics and strategic repercussions. As we get entrenched in the system, we become like the leaf struggling to hold on to the branch i.e. our beliefs. In this quest to prove ourselves and our grit at times we get overthrown by the sheer might of the system we operate in.

This is when we join the mainstream, the tranquil waters. We become so mechanized that we lose sight of what we really want and what we believe in. We become like thousand leaves flowing in the water, aimlessly.

Getting engulfed by the system is only natural. It is a reality no one can fight. But unlike the helpless nature, mankind has been gifted with the power of comprehension. This is where the difference emerges. While the leaf has no choice but to flow in the water, we have been gifted with the intellect to break away from the clutter.

We might not be able to change the system, but always have the choice to stay out of it and carve our niche. We allow the mainstream to paint us all in one color and equate us all. We get so stuck in the rut that we forget that each one of us has a special talent and is uniquely gifted. Lucky are the ones who can identify this gift in them.

Man vis a vis nature has the power to choose and tread his own path and do what he truly believes in. And that is when the universe begins to conspire to convert dreams into reality.