A matter of choice

This is the story of the Hare who lost his spectacles is a cute song I love. Like the Hare, I lost mine too.

"Ostensibly motionless, the hare was trembling with excitement, for without his spectacles he was completely helpless. Where were his spectacles? Could someone have stolen them? Had he mislaid them? What was he to do?"

I was not sure why anyone would flick my dear pair of spectacles? It was only dear to me and to no one else. But then, such is life.

Thanks to the meteoric rise in the use of technology in ophthalmology, I also own a pair of lenses. Rarely used for special occassions. This also means that I was not as helpless as the hare. I did not have to rush to an optician and get another pair. I started using my lenses at work, for a drive and for a movie. After all, I did own the pair, might as well use it.

A week went by and I was headed on a long drive out to the mountains. It was so irritating that I had to spend half an hour to get lens ready just for my very own drive. That day I decided to get another pair and damn the lenses I own.

So, here I was, all set on buying a new pair of spectacles. I went to the shop expecting to spend a few minutes trying out a frame and spent an hour checking out "fashionable" stuff. There were 500 varieties and innumerable brands and so many designs vying for my attention.

It's funny how the shop keeper and his assistant become your close friends ( I wonder if that is the correct word here) and decide that his opinion on what suits me should matter. They tell you what they like and what looks good on my face. I was to make a choice and I "chose" what they liked on my face. Why? I wonder!

A matter of choice indeed! I was wondering if I would have been happier if I had no choice except for the gandhian frame or some such basic number but maybe not. Do we really need all these varieties to spice up our lives? Were we as a race more clear and focused when we had less choice? Has China got it right when they choose economies of scale and make a billion similar pieces of an item than Indian Entrepreneurs who customise just about everything?

What is the real choice? Waiting for a perfecet holiday when you can see the perfect sunrise over a golden beach or enjoy the daily sunrise outside my window in between two buildings?

Music as celebration...

Music as celebration is the key here: brightly coloured by elements of improvisation, this material echoes the many diverse and sometimes conflicting spiritual yearnings, which might trouble the itinerant middle-aged musician on his continuing journey across the world stages.

Apparently, it was also quite fun to play.

- Ali Aziz, The Mesopotamia Sun – Times, 1995

Yesterday evening I was home early and felt like some lovely Tull to start the weekend.
I read this on a CD cover. Every piece of music over the years by Jethro Tull or Andersen has been one great celebration of music.

Ian Anderson plays the flute beautifully and is the Commanding General on the stage for Jethro Tull music. I read once that he does not like blog reviews and I will certainly not do that here but I liked this bit of Journalism about him and wanted to “own” it.

I am New to this!

Someone asked me this morning:
how do you define success? Is success tons of money in the bank and position in society - somebody else's perception where you get talked about in big society-do's or maybe written about in magazines as part of an elite statistic? In the process, how much do you compromise on time for yourself, or for the people you love, or live for?

I was thinking and so this blog came up.

Success is to achieve what you want to achieve. It could just be 2 square meals and lots of time to do nothing or it could be 80 hour weeks and a million dollars growing in your name. It could be betterment of the society you live in or a combination of it all. I believe I am rich and fairly successful since I am happy with what I have. You may think otherwise. Relativity and Change are two things you need to keep in mind when you define success. My mother is possibly the most successful in my eyes because she raised us well and devoted herself so much to the concept of family. She made the future a bright place for so many people by making sure her children were good human beings. In her view, she failed because she did not make any use of her musical talent. So, both of us view her success or the lack of it differently.

I know by every yardstick of society I am not a successful human being but maybe this is all I want out of life. I might change the view 20 years later, who knows and frankly does it really matter at all?

If I can sleep at night knowing that I did not harm anybody today and I spent the day constructively, I think I have then earned the right to live. (Even if it was just a constructive Holiday spent watching movies)

To sum up, I don't measure success on a pre defined scale. It's a yardstick that is fluid depending on the time, place, people and god knows what else…

That was tough thinking in between a working Monday. I really should be getting back to work or feel guilty about wasting time.