Saturday 29 September 2012

Footholds in Life

Tree clinging to a rock
Living on the Edge


It felt like a particularly long weekend. Not because of it being an extended one, but because he felt alone.

Alone, was something he understood only too well when  living in a big city. During the week he was working, his mind was preoccupied and busy, but when the weekend came... Where could he go? He felt 'unconnected'. What could he do, if the things that interested most people, just did not interest him?

What was it about being in a place, teeming with millions of other 'beings' and yet feeling utterly isolated, useless and alone?

This was a feeling that had visited him often when he was in that place.

Not only had it visited him on every occasion when he had stayed there for a while, but there had been many times when he had tried to run away from it. He would force himself to stay a while and then dash off like a frightened rabbit back into the folds of mad, vibrant, chaotic life in old 'Mother India'.
That had become his place of refuge. A place where anything and everything seemed possible. A place where he felt constantly, the 'grit' of life in his teeth. The place where 'life' challenged him at every turn and where it was totally and without boundaries, 'in his face'.

There was something about 'getting his hands dirty' that made him feel like he was alive. He used to wonder, 'is there anyone else out there, who feels like this too?'

Read more in Masters, Mice and Men
Books by the Writer

Sunday 23 September 2012

Ubuntu, 'I Am Because You Are'

"I Am Because of You"


How interdependent and inter connected are we all?
Can any of us exist in this world alone?

Our inter relationship with Everything and Everyone, 
is the very basis and fabric of our existence.
Not a single one of us can live in isolation.
From the air that we breath, to the food that we eat, 
our existence is woven into the whole tapestry of life as an integral and inter dependent fact.

'Ubuntu' is an African word, derived from the Zulu language. It has no direct translation into the English.  However, Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu came close to encapsulating the spirit of it with his words;  'My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours'...
'A person is a person, through other people'. This idea has its roots in African humanist philosophy which postulates that society is built upon 'common humanity, oneness, you and me both'...

Read more in Never Not Ever Here Now
Books by the Writer