Skip to main content

...to choose our chains

Jean Jacques Rousseau said, "Freedom is the power to choose our own chains."
And we are efficiently hanging ourselves with it.
Churchill reportedly said that Indians were not fit to rule but only to be ruled; that all Indian leaders will be of low calibre and men of straw... with sweet tongues and silly hearts. I do not know whether he really said them.
But we are hell-bent on bringing his 'prediction' to fruition. As a commoner, I do not like to switch on the TV to watch news or to read a newspaper. It's chaos out there and there is peace only in remaining ignorant of what's happening in the country. Every political party or individual is hurling stones at another. In the melee, no one knows who is the stone-thrower and who is the victim. Maturity of a nation is in knowing how to build a bridge with those chains.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The next step forward

“ What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? It's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's goodbye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” -- Jack Kerouac (American Poet and Novelist) From what I have seen and admired in humans, they are eternal optimists. Goodbyes seem to break us, but we straighten up and walk, holding our head high, blinking away our tears. And as regards the specks of people dispersing, when something moves away, something else comes near. Guess that's how laws of nature move. If a time comes when nothing else comes near, it's when we will become really alone; alone to live and love life without any reason, taking the next step forward.
5 comments
Read more

Caterpillar or butterfly?

'Caught in a strange land in a net with other butterflies, I'm a caterpillar yet undecided to remain a caterpillar and perish or turn into a beautiful butterfly and live a life full of joy.' Readers don't laugh. But I came up with this one night recently when I was travelling in a train. I tossed and turned, not being able to sleep, upset over unexplainable things and frustrated over events not in my control. Then it occurred to me that our life and its usefulness depends on our decisions -- whether to remain a crawling caterpillar whose existence otherwise is either ignored by all and sundry or who is cursed for just being there and thrown out with a stick, or to develop wings of life and metamorphose into a beautiful butterfly whom everybody adores for its beauty and colour, for its flitting liveliness, for its service to the flower's pollination... I thought that I should be a butterfly, of service to others, but then again I thought, anyway, who really cares? 
8 comments
Read more

Resilience

You wake up every morning deciding that this day you are going to be happy, care-free and not haunted by memories. It's like being a child. As the day goes by, it seems each and every event, small words or things bring back those memories which you would wish to forget. You just shake it off and move on to the next work at hand. I guess our resilience holds out through everything that seems to be ready to break us. This is the human spirit I have learnt to admire. But when it doesn't? 
5 comments
Read more