Showing posts with label Rat Race. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rat Race. Show all posts

Thursday, May 6, 2010

The End is Near


Yeah the end…not only is it here…but also near… no no I am not trying my hand at some cheap alliteration. It’s just a fallout of a long conversation with a friend who goes long back and is far away…a long way off the pacific so to speak.
Well, over ISD calls arguing the case of networking and or the need for small talk, we touched the topic whether the end is what matters or is it the journey? Quoting management theories my friend just reinforced the fact that all such theories are actually bullshit pointers filled with jargons and only serve the purpose of confusing the other person. The person at the receiving end, not making head or tail out of it ends up buying the theory often at an exorbitant cost (cash or kind) and falls into the trap of success, chaos and rat race.
But I digress; I am not here to do some MBA bashing (which incidentally is my favorite sport ;)) but to acknowledge the fact that this time it does make some sense.
Yes, in a way the ‘END’ is what everyone or say most people have in mind when they start a venture be it business, social or artistic in nature. But it’s not always the end that makes most people strive towards making the venture a success…sometime success lies in completing the journey, sometime the journey/process is so exciting that the end doesn’t matter.
We are all born with one certain thing… death… we know that it will happen, but does one fling himself off the 31st floor of a high-rise or sleep on railway tracks or send a personal invitation to the likes of Kasab to reach the end. No, we traverse each day learning new things, experiencing various emotions so that when we reach death we can find some other end. The journey towards death is what matters most, more than death itself.
When anything is given life, the end of that life is death…but the blooming of the flower, to the chirp of a bird, to the gush of a waterfall, to the roll of the sea, to the stoic silence of the mountains, to the bounding jump of the hare, to the rat race of the humans, is but only the by-product of that end. And if the flower attracts the pollen carrying bee to pass on the emotions along with the pollen, if the bird chirps forth a tune to the hearts of a lovelorn poet, if the waterfall excites the fish to swim in dangerous water, if the sea calls out to the surfers, if the mountains beckon the hermit…then they do so with the hope that their emotions, their intrinsic nature, their being doesn’t end with their physical death… that someday there will be some flower, some bird, some water fall, some sea, some mountain, some animal, some human somewhere which will not dwell on the impending death but will carry their legacy forward thereby making them mortal… thereby rubbishing the fear of the end.
Because, the end is always near…. but with each end comes a beginning as well.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Only 1493 Tigers left… Save the man!




The ad says Only 1493 Tigers left… save the tiger… but I say there are only 1129 Men left… who is going to save them?
What only 1129 Men…aren’t we a one billion plus country…well yeah…but where are the men?
The dozen that I know don’t constitute a man…. 7 percent are automations….they are programmed to get up and go to work and then party after work. No No, it’s not a new age phenomenon… this robotization of man… you can see it all the way through their lives. They were wired to be automations right from their birth…they went to school, college, professional college, work, marriage, kids, etc like clockwork… it was as if their meter was on since the time they were born.
Many don’t even question the purpose of being in this rat race… they are busy making investment plans for the future, not realizing that the future that they are seeking will always lie …well in the future.
Who will save the man?