PORTRAIT OF IMPERFECTION CALLED MAN

Can the water ever be absolutely clean? Can the air ever be completely pure? Impurities are as much a part of life as it in nature. The strange part is that all of us sometime or the other think that we are perfect or set an expectation that we are perfect and can never go wrong.

Seldom do we realize that perfection is not a state of being, it is a goal to live for. A goal all of us strive to achieve in our lives. Sometimes we achieve it in some sphere of life but slacken in the other. But the key never lies in achieving it, it lies in striving for it. Just like they say the destination doesn’t matter what matters is the journey. Similarly, how we gradually remove the impurities in us matters more than bliss we achieve at the end of it.

And there is no guarantee that we will not slip up. We will fall again and again but how quickly we get up and start walking truly signifies progress. All this is easier said than done and somewhere it is true that only when you experience rough patches in life do you realize how to overcome them. You will never know what fire can do till the time u touch it.

If the purest things in nature like air and water can be impure then we are mere mortals and are full of impurities. But the man who all his life strives to remove these impurities is the man who truly has lived his life and will be remembered and respected not for his feats but for the person he became.

The Powerhouse!

She clung to it with her life. Delicate fingers clasped round it, sticky palms itching to loosen the grip but her mind said “hold on to your stick or else you will fall and hurt yourself”. She listened to the voice that came from her head.

She started to live with the belief that the strength lies in the stick. It is her only support that will make her stand. She could lean on it and face the world bravely. This also somewhere reflects that she inwardly believed that she is weak and cannot stand without support.

We are all a lot like this woman. The only difference is we do not have a stick to lean on but we have our logical thinking and reason which we use as our stick that will give us support throughout our lives. We use our head to rationalize everything. Sometimes to such an extent, that we start to plan and influence our future.

One day, by some cosmic stroke of luck, the woman lost grip of her stick and what she feared happened. She fell. The stick broke. She looked around for help, for support but the only source that she found was herself. She had no choice but to muster courage and try to stand on her own two feet. She tried once, she failed, she tried again and stood up a bit. Her legs trembled, her eyes wet. She stood up and looked around, except her, everything was unchanged.

All of us have a similar situation in life, when we are left with no choice but to stand. No choice but to look inward and find that reservoir of strength which we thought lies outside. We let reason and logic deafen us and subdue the faint yet strong inner voice. It’s true when someone says, “you yourself are a powerhouse of energy waiting to be tapped and explored and the day you do that, you will truly be ‘self contained’.”