Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 16

 

Every day try to have some thoughts in support of a Smile. It can be done as a habit.

☻

Victory gives you a trophy; failure gives you a chance to fight for a still bigger one. Keep going. But never miss the beautiful scenes of life on both sides of your path. As long as you enjoy the free bouquets of nature around, life no longer gets defined in victory-defeat terms. It acquires a larger dimension. It turns meaningful by itself. And joy and happiness come as the natural, unconditional fruits of the path. Journey well. Never miss your smile.

☻

Well there never was a destination. The only destination has been to move from a painful journey to a joyful one. It's a very subtle change in gears: From the outer shadows, which are ever shifting and fleeting, to the inner substance that is ever unperturbed and waiting for the journeyman to come home at long last.

☻

So much for the conceptualized set of sins and vices! We have too many hypothetical concepts to tame the basic instincts in humans. A vice is not a vice everywhere. A so called 'vice' with larger motivation loses its dark shades. Without a supportive chorus in the background, it again becomes a loathsome act in abstract. But there is hardly anything in total abstractness, except in the pages of books and the brains revising these for one-upmanship to win a point. Reality is too muddled up. There is hardly any vice that goes totally unjustified. And rarely a virtue that stands perfectly justified. Read Dostoevsky's Gambler. It treats gambling as a vice and then not so sinful art driven by the pure psychosis of a helpless heart mad after the chancy windfalls of win and loss and even beyond.

☻

Now I understand why economically challenged households have bigger treasure in the form of children. As Mr. Micawber says in David Copperfield:

‘In our children we live again, and that, under the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, any accession to their number is doubly welcome.’

☻

To lead a successful social life, invest in a few relations wisely and with soft emotions. Work and behave with people in a manner as to have two or three persons who will always have a room for you in their house, half a dozen at least who will always have a chair for you at their dining table, a few dozen who will always have softness for you in their hearts and a few hundred who will surely smile at you as you pass them. This, dear readers, is the hallmark of a peaceful, happy, mundane life of a common man. If the ingredients of joy are so earthly, why then aim for cosmic shots to find a meaning in life?

☻

While we fret, fume and get frustrated for the things that we don't have, feeling wronged both by the system and destiny, there are people we carry on uncomplaining, even though they have just a fraction of what we have, but deserve 100 times more than us. Just give a careful look around. We have many in our locality itself, so there is no need to pack bags and search in distant lands. Doesn't it make you feel the luckiest of the lot? A sense of gratitude needs this much of attention.

Many times we think we don't have enough for our talent. So many times we crib about having less for what we do. But then there are the lives that could have been better than any of us just that they were born in a ditch and circumstances never allowed them to come out. I see scores of such unsung heroes on a daily basis and find myself humbled and cut down to my real size.

☻