Idyllic Thoughts

Two days ago, a deformed man sat begging in front of our house during the yearly car festival of the nearby temple. There was a huge crowd and the man must have collected a good amount of money. At night, when we were sitting out enjoying the lights and the festive atmosphere, he came to us and asked us if he could keep the money safely hidden for the night inside our compound. He took it back the next day after carefully counting the lot. We often deride such not-beautiful people saying that they are strong enough to work instead of begging. I agree most of the times. But today I realised that when beautiful people use their beauty to earn as in film industry, we laud them, follow them, praise their talent even when it's lacking. Some use their natural beauty to earn a livelihood, while others use their natural deformity. Isn't it the same?

After writing the previous post, I found out what Ayn Rand had said about the spark in all of us in her book 'Atlas Shrugged.' Here it is : "Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours."

Everyone has a fire burning deep inside us. It is that fire which makes us feel alive, makes us rush forward, take risks. It never lets us rest. Today, while thinking about it, I realised why slavery survived so long in this world. They had let themselves surrender because the fire within them had gone out. There was no spark of life left within them. It took hundreds of years for the fire of life to be rekindled. And once it did, you could see how the world was transformed. Never let that fire in you go out.