Randomly thinking...

Last evening, the neighbor's son broke the ring of the decorative pot kept outside our front door, (fortunately the plant was safe). Knowing he had done something he had been previously warned about, he ran away. No owning up, no sorry - I know I shouldn't have,... nothing. After a moment's irritation, I put it out of my mind...

Question: why did I mind?

Answer: Because some timeless values like 'not playing with a ball in an enclosed area,' ' respecting a neighbor's yard, or front door,' and most of all 'respecting plants (and animals)' had been violated. Is violated too harsh? But that is how I felt...my Dad would not scold me as much for a prank, as he would get upset if I treated one of the plants in the garden he was so proud of, badly - as in, pinched its leaves, or ran my hand carelessly over it, or bent too close to it. I remember he would insist on having plants at the entrance. We lived in a campus, and naturally there were many times when the students would come to see him. And, while waiting - invariably - would touch the plants. If they were nervous, the leaves would get pinched; if they knew they were in for a 'talk', whole branches would get broken; and if they were happy, chances are that some of the flower petals or leaves would find their way into their hands...and Daddy would, I think, sense it...and gently but firmly they would be instructed on how to respect beauty, and Nature...(in time, I think they feared that more than what they had come for!).

He never entrusted the planting of the trees and plants to the gardener - she had to just weed the garden, and generally look after it - but planting, mowing the lawn, loving and caring  were done by Dad. Even the flowers that he gently cut and brought in every day, I do believe, only smiled for, and at him...

It was the same with the trees in our yard - we could climb them, play under them, run around them, but not hurt them in any way - any way - . He even dinned it into my DD from the moment she was born, since she spent a great deal of time in the lovely garden he had created... . Never mind time of day or night - she was in the garden looking at the sunlight through the trees, or at the night sky, or having all her meals surrounded by plants... .She was very young when he passed on, but she still, somewhere deep inside her, remembers........

I think plants and trees had a telepathic connection with him.

As for my brother and me - God help us if.......

And so we grew up learning to love their company - since we shared Dad with them.

Maybe that's why I sooooooo love plants, and trees......just looking at them and spending time with them is an instant pick-me-up...it's NECESSARY to my life...

Randomly deliberating...

on an insight...

When parents/teachers/adults see the young folk do things which cause a collective intake of self-righteous breath and go - 'in our time...', I realize we are doing both the young and us, the older, a grave injustice.

The second we are in is different from the one that just went by, and the one that is waiting to happen. We are different in the second that is passed, in the second that is the now, and will be in the second that is to come. How then can two periods of time be the same? How can similar situations - arguments with parents and teachers, school/college, work life.....simply living... in two periods of time ever be the same?

No one can really, hand on heart, say that 'our times' were better - there are good times and bad times in all the ages...and all the times..........as the inexorable passage of time happens, best is to live in this second of time, without looking over one shoulder at the past, or predicting the 'dire' future...ending up making our young, our old and ourselves miserable....

Randomly rambling...

Hellen Keller, deaf, dumb and blind (how stumping-defeating-terrifying is that), said: 

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, 

- Helen Keller

and we know that what does not exist in nature cannot exist in us - and yet, security is the one single thing that we all absolutely and totally cling to  - security of love, security of a job, security of the economics of our lives, security of our home and family, security of our possessions, security of friends.....the list is endless....seems like we can never let go............................and all the time, security remains just a superstition, and we bind ourselves to this superstition...

Semper Fidelis

Semper Fidelis - Always Faithful - is the motto of the U.S. Marine Corps.

I read this in connection with a story of a marine who was dying in the middle of a carnage, fighting someone else's war in someone else's country. A lowly marine who was just a number in the ranks and files of the U. S. army. These were his dying words... . He had been faithful right up till the end.

No great earth-shattering, headline-screaming task has to be done to change the world. You don't have to be a General or someone in the public eye. Your experiences do not make you an authority on anything - your experiences are meant to make you a better person, and brighten that tiny corner your light has been placed in.

One just has to be faithful to one's duty - day after day, no matter where life has put you - Always faithful -

One thought led to another and I couldn't help my mind turning to America - with what wonderful values the Founding Fathers built America. O course now the country is going through a bad patch, but if Americans just stop to hark back, and get back to those values, there is no reason they won't be able to put the country back in order, for, no institution/organization/country can get away from the values with which they had been created. They may be temporarily hidden, but they are bound to come back - they have to. It is the same with us here too in India. While the confused economically upper classes are going their own way, and the politicians are causing mayhem, those children of the soil who have stayed true to original Indian values are keeping the country from completely toppling over... .

The hope of any country lies in those who are Always Faithful...

The hope of any life lies in just being Always Faithful...

Reaching out...

to all those who are looking after their old ailing parents, and are having to care for them as they would babies...

A dear friend was telling me how she was devastated by the state her father was in. She and her sister had to look after their once-strapping-imperious Dad, as if he was a baby. Having gone through a similar experience, I knew how she was feeling. It is an unbearable pain in the innermost and deepest part of your heart to see the parent you once relied on, the parent who probably ruled your life with an iron hand, the parent who might have treated you unfairly on occasion, the parent who cared for you when you were ill, the parent who wiped your tears, the parent who helped you grow up, and who you left far behind  - whatever the reason...but a parent occupies a larger-than-life presence in the heart of every child no matter that the 'child' may now be an elderly person. Where once you so relied on them to take care of you, today you are caring for them as you would your own little children...what a tremendous thing to cope with - your own children on one hand, who for a parent always remain their babies, and your parents-turned-babies on the other. Bathing them, feeding them, combing their hair, looking after all their needs, caring for them, loving them so that they don't feel left out or abandoned -  what havoc this creates in the heart and mind cannot be calculated. The frustrations you experience looking at their helplessness, and at the same time trying to not let them feel the frustration of their helplessness and dependence. It can turn your whole mind upside down, and no consolation or reasoning seems to help you to come to grips with this. Many rational solutions of how to cope are offered, but nothing seems to work, and all the while you know that you cannot allow yourself to be sucked into this quicksand of sorrow - life has to go on - there is a responsibility to yourself...and to those who love you...and those you love...

And then when this parent-turned-baby passes on - you know with  your head that that was the best thing that could happen to the parent, but the pain is cripplingly overwhelmingly unbearable, leaving an aching forlorn-ness, a desolation... . My brother says it is because when you care for them as a baby, and the parent goes away, it is as if you have lost your child - and that, we all know, is the absolute worst thing that could ever happen - to lose your child....

So how do we cope? I think the only thing is to draw strength from the fact that you are not the only one who is walking on this road...so you are not alone...

Believe that you will come through....lean on grace, and keep reminding yourself that you are not alone...

and...............................

send a silent ' I know ...................I am with you....' to someone who is struggling...

A grandmother's wisdom...

"There, but for the grace of God, go I"

This was a line that my mother quoted many times. Over the years the wisdom in these words has sent down deep roots into my heart.

Something that I love doing is looking at people - I'm not sure why - but I love looking at people around me and see what they are wearing, how they are talking, or not talking, and most of all I look at their faces, trying to see what they are saying, behind what they are apparently saying... . So often, I see the pain, the heartache, the hidden longings, and sometimes I read the 'that-could've-been-me-there' look when they look at someone who seems to on top of things, and I think - "there, but for the grace of God, go I"...because all that is/was very familiar ground......and again the thought comes that "whatever happens, happens for a reason"...if only we can learn how to patiently wait to learn, and wait for the learning time to pass...

Victims all?

Are we all victims of some or other thought the mind throws up? The mind, as we learn from all reliable sources, is our greatest enemy causing any amount of damage in our heads which get translated into chaos in our lives. And though we can try to instantly put aside what the mind is telling us, in the brief instants that we give in to listening to what it has to say, we cause that much destruction in ourselves.

So see, thanks to our delusions, illusions, fanciful-imaginations-which-never-become-real, will-o'-the-wisp considerations, fleeting reflections, chimeric standards that we strive to attain, seriously-foolish-brown-studies we allow ourselves to get immersed in, we all become sojourners in victimsville.

And being in victimsville, is like being in the vice-like grip of some evil fairy...