When we were kids

I was at my friend’s place yesterday and we were talking about the time when we were kids, all mischief that we did, high school love stories and all the embarrassing moments that we had to face because of our juvenile foolishness. We talked for hours and kept laughing recalling all those good old memories. The time was so good then, we were all so careless and away from the worries of the real world; all we had to do is go to school, play cricket after school, do some studies in the evening, watch television and then go to bed with a sound sleep; that was pretty much every day routine. We were not worried about anything- not about the job, money or relationships or how the future’s gonna look like few years down the line. All we thought about and planned of were things going on that moment or next or a day after; nothing more than that came to our mind or if it did we didn’t care-we were living life pretty much in present, unlike today when we are no more kids and we worry much about things gone wrong in past and things that may happen in future. Now we don’t enjoy the present as much as we did while we were kids.

I wonder why it has become so tough to live life in present and be happy all the time even when we have grown more independent than ever, earning quite handsome salaries and living in bigger cities with much easier lifestyle. I wish I knew the answer to that but it’s all just so much clouded that I can’t recall when and why did I lose track of living life in “just the present”.

Walk to the destiny

“Do you believe in destiny?” – That’s one of the most popular questions asked and the most popular answer is “people write their own destiny”. Like many others I too have wondered often about everything that we do and every choice that we make -whether it all has already been decided and if we are just the mere players of the drama playing our role for some bigger cause? Or if our actions are result of the some complicated equation where the end result has certain degree of uncertainty because of the fluctuating variables in the equation? Or if we can truly decide everything in our life and write our own destiny? Quite confusing, isn’t it?

I have thought about it all for years and couldn’t conclude anything. There are certain things that are in our control for example day to day decisions about what to do and what not to do, career decisions, being good to people, being honest and so on.. But then there are a lot of other things that are beyond our control and pretty much unexpected like natural disasters, tragedies happening with the people around us, others behavior or actions, often erupting misunderstandings etc. These are some of the many things that we don’t have control over but all of these control us in a way or other no matter how hard we try to remain nonreactive towards each of these-everything that is living has reactive nature. Part of our destiny is written by us but there are chapters that are written by others because if it was all totally in our control no one would ever want to close a chapter with a gloomy or bitter ending. For instance we cannot decide to have all good people in our lives and never cross paths with people that we don’t wish to have around. Or even the things that look pretty much in our control - like we cannot decide who to fall in love with because if that was the case no one would be crying the songs of broken heart; similarly, we can’t force others to fall in love with us.

But if we think beyond our selfish reasons, having everyone’s life completely in their own control will create a chaos because it’s like having a free will and it’s the sort of independence that will make us humans even more selfish, robotic and even agnostic. Our destiny not being completely in our control and parts of it being written by others around us is for the good because that’s how we are connected and that’s how we stay social and more human.