It is important to stay in the real world- but it hurts, definitely!

With this write up, I wish to draw parallels between an ethereal nature and a real world! It is written with a hope that the ethereal becomes real, and the existing reality becomes a bad dream.

Looking outside my window, I can see green shoots- trees, bushes, and the grass putting out new green shoots- symbolic of new life. Even from an Individual’s point of view. The fictional images of a politically correct, perfect world is much larger and beautiful and my question is, can we make it real?

It doesn’t take a second to say yes, but how much of efforts are we willing to put in?

"I was imagining an innocent little girl running down the meadows, I looked deep into her eyes and saw the shadows of a soft, clean, vibrantly innocent child playing on a porch somewhere in the Midwest perhaps. A small dog runs around her as she tries to clutch the wagging tail of the dog in her hand. She laughs with her barefoot brother, who is clad in overalls, as he chases her around the yard with a grasshopper on his finger. She screams and giggles. Her father watches from the porch in a wooden rocker, laughing while mom gently scolds her brother”.

AH. How does every want to be in a closed definition of a perfect peaceful world but still there is unhappiness? Who are the real victims of this situation?

No matter, the tragedies that play out around the world, whether terrorist attacks, disease outbreaks or any kind of injustice, life begins anew. Nothing stops/waits. Everything changes, and that’s the reality.  Every time we grind to a halt after a savage blow, we learn to pick up the threads again and move on- which is a very good habit, but why do we forget and commit the same error again? That has to be under the questioning radar.

That is the irony of life.

Out of the ashes of death, springs forth new shoots and a new life. The human heart is made for peace and beauty – but it is human hands that kills and destroy. It is human beings who erect barriers, who do all they can do to destroy humanity and engage in ferocious warfare, that know no limits. It is the kind of world that little children and babies become victims of war and refugees flee from systems that do not respect human rights and get caught in cross currents that hinder their flight.

Sitting on the periphery of all this, alone with nature, drinking in some of its peace and quiet, how do I reconcile the two- a life of quiet and harmony and a world shattered by pain and inhumanity? Many build a life of comfort and ease and are confident that ‘they are safe’. These safe havens, if they exist, are rare. We cannot dismiss the horrific things that happen to others and remain untouched by them.

The mere thought of an individual being, “safe” and only his/her associations remaining “safe” is also skewed, no one bats an eye to know if another individual is being troubled, something as simple as one of the old “moral stories” that we have listened to while we grew up- Old man falling down after stepping on a banana peel thrown on the road by a young lad. In this case, the young lad was in his “safe, comfortable” life and didn’t care for another person and the old man did not do any wrong to take this up.

The comparison undergoes a transition from a fiction to a reality in a larger and scary magnitude.

It is not just the Paris attack, Chennai floods, Violence in Syria, or the recent crackdown in India, but every place that experiences violence in which the innocent suffer the death& destruction, wipes out hope.

This makes me wonder, if horror stories are no more fictional. I don’t have to buy a book to read such stories which are a ‘mere’ fiction. I can opt to spend INR 3 and still choose to read all the ‘real’ horrific stories from the daily paper.

To be involved, is to feel great compassion for the victims, to reach out to them and to be on our guard against the networks that support all this violence and crime. The justification that perpetrators seek in religion, for instance, is misguided. When certain places are targeted, perpetrators of violence do not count the human cost.

Yet, there are hope givers. They heal wounds, help those who have suffered, sometimes go to conflict zones and reach out, irrespective of risks to themselves. There can be no empty boast that we are not affected at all and so can continue to lead peaceful lives without any interference. That is because we belong to one human family which means that all human beings have the right to safety and protection against unjust systems.

Breakthrough in Life is God's Magic! Definitely a breakdown will be followed by a breakthrough and to stay stronger during the former, it is important to place trust on the later.

We only have one life to live – and let it be the best one.

So as I continue to look at the green shoots outside my window, I see once again the signs of renewal and new life. We have begun anew. Every new dawn comes with signs of new life. Life is ethereal and eternal and if our eyes are not dimmed by hopelessness, we will see before us nature renewing itself, inviting us to the selfsame renewal. The question is, can we make the best of the invitation?