when you grow up!!

Skyped with my mom and was entertained by all the new antics of my 1.5 years old nephew, Abir. Among other acts, mom prompted, "Abir kitna bada?", and up he reached his hand to show how big is he. While it was definitely cute to see him upto all this (and my heart just melts away every time I see him!!), it did bring in some thoughts about what we as beings (humans? maybe not) aspire.
Ever since we are children, we are taught / conditioned to aspire to 'become' someone. Remember, "beta, bade hokar kya banoge?" ("What do you want to be when you grow up?") and we would be all starry eyed and say "Doctor / Teacher / Hero / Heroine.... ". Ever since we took notice of the stuff going on around us, we are taught to aspire. We are taught to live for something that will happen in the future. When we are in school, we aspire for the 'cooler' college life, when in college, we look forward to start working and be 'independent' and when we start working, we want to take a 'long break to do something meaningful' (well, one cant aspire to be dead, you know :P). And if it means to slog our behinds today to reach to that 'something' in the future, that's ok.
Cut to adulthood. Rather, cut to the phase, just after a crises point.
Crisis being a period when you are just on the verge of insanity and apparently everyone around you has it all figured out and they are ready to offload all their knowledge on you. Crises could include low / no pay raise, breakup with girl/boyfriend, getting the credit card bill etc etc .. you get the drift).
It is during this period, that we are told by one and all, "Dont worry too much about the future. Take one day at a time. Live the moment.". These, of course, also include the same people who perhaps told us to aspire for the future life sometime in the past. How in the world, does one get to live in the present, when all his/ her life he/she has been taught / trained / conditioned to live for the future. When all his/her life, he/she believed that the present is crappy anyways, life will be much better tomorrow. No wonder we find it so difficult to adjust to this new way of life - living in the present and end up passing the same down the generations... Nonsense, I say!!!

Accidents & immortality

Accidents, apart from all the obvious physical & emotional effects, have a large humbling effect.
Most of the times we see or hear about accidents and subconsciously believe that "this can't happen to me". well, it's convenient to believe so!
But when one does meet with an accident, the reality about the mortality of human body comes rushing into one's face... and it doesn't matter how small or big the physical impact of an accident is, even the smallest of falls have the power to humble a human thought of "immortality"!