Adding to 'Is it critical?'

Going beyond using 'Is it critical?' to deal with pressured days...

I think we can ask this question of anything that we do, or that comes our way....

Is this critical for me - for my happiness, my intellectual growth, my peace of mind, my emotional well-being, my weight program, my bank balance, my holiday plans, my dreams and aspirations, my dream home, my study program? (and anything else that is important for you)

It also helps to ask this question when faced with a choice - makes it easier, because an answer to this will surely be in alignment with your core.

A fabulous role model...

for all of us for whom 50, or 60, or 70 is a milestone we've left behind.....

Zohra Sehgal 

She turned 100 yesterday, and is as feisty as ever.....

I am totally inspired by her......and since she is a homegrown person, it is easy to identify with her, and absorb her zest for living.

For, zest doesn't just happen. Bit by bit, and sometimes the bits are painful, it has to be built up - starting with small things, and gradually making it a habit, till it then turns and becomes the propelling force.....

What a lady! What a life!!

And best of all - we too can have it!!!!!!

An important lesson...

I'd heard from my DD, but which I see happening in real time for me now......

My DD's always worked in a corporate house, and under (what seems to me) tremendous pressure of checking quality under (to me, again) insane deadlines. Her response to a zillion decisions that need to be taken at the same moment has always been: Is it critical? or, It's not critical or variations of that.....but keeping the focus on 'critical'.

Having worked all my life with children, the concept of deadlines was rather hazy. Deadlines had a stretchable quality, within reasonable limits of course, because you can't fit kids into boxes. So if there was an issue, time was never the problem or the main point - the child was. I could take my time over a child's problems, till finally the smile was back, and self-confidence restored.

Now I work in cybersphere, and deadlines are very real. I've found that one-line mails and msgs hinting at deadlines can be quite devastating.....and paralyzing......so now, am learning the value of asking 'Is it critical'!!! What is critical to my work? to my peace of mind, and to my life......??

.......................and then pursuing that line of action...........................and..................it's working!!!!!

When the blinkers fall off...

it's actually a good thing, though the process of the blinkers falling is quite a difficult and painful process - it doesn't happen either easily or quickly...

This usually happens when someone we have been sure of, suddenly decides to break off; or when we've been doing something year in and year out, and the boss thinks that our services can now be dispensed with; or a course of action that we've been on, has to be incised or even surgically removed because it has lost its purpose with us.

The most natural reaction is to want to hang on.....that situation was (or the person meant) comfort zone for us............................that's the unhappy part.

The learning part is when we realize that life isn't stopping, nor are we falling off the globe, but life is going on steadily forcing us to change our course/pattern/thinking/life view...

The good part is that it makes us - after a bit of time, of course - more clear thinking, mentally stronger and more composed, more decisive, and best of all, more positively detached. What's also a revelation is how new ideas and thoughts start flowing, as a result of the brain having got a good shaking...

There is nothing...

that is insignificant.

Things happen, things we read, or write, or talk about, or work on, or do......nothing is inconsequential, or irrelevant, or meaningless, or pointless, or trivial.....

A simple exchange, which we may call meaningless, is not so, because in those few moments we have allowed a heart to touch ours and we have touched another's heart.

A 'Hello, how are  you. I am fine' letter, with news of daily things that happened to him/her/them, is not to be discarded as something that has nothing of import in it. It is important, simply because a connection has been established...a reaching out has happened, an inclusion of you in their daily lives.

And so on....

If we measure everything in terms of usefulness, or importance, or spending of time, or value, then we are sure to miss out on the simple things that actually goes into making life beautiful and more importantly fulfilling.

Another distractor...

(there is a word like that says the Oxford Dictionary!)

Anyway -

I've been distracted - totally and completely by Elizabeth Bard's Lunch in Paris. (A surprise gift from my DD)

I've been soaking myself in it, and I don't know what I'm enjoying more - the love story, or the recipes....or Paris.....?

As it  always happens with me, I end up trying to get an insight into the person/persons, and that invariably takes me off on another track.

No matter if it is Madame Defarge in Tale of Two Cities, or Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, or Joe Gargery in Great Expectations, or Jason Bourne in Bourne Identity or whoever....I end up spending more time getting into their lives.....trying to pry and poke into what they are really all about - what they really think, or feel....

Something I've written...

on a topic close to my heart, especially since I was so involved in it for close on 25 years - and still, though I've changed course, I get agitated when I see the nonsense going on in our schools. As for the way the government is going about it, it fair drives me up the wall......I get so mad.....

The book 'bad land' by Jonathan Raban went straight to my heart. I've extracted the bit on education from it, because I thought it made such eminent sense. Check out what I've penned down. It's at: http://ezinearticles.com/?Education-in-Schools&id=6981189