Skip to main content

New World


Source: here

“... I felt a deep joy.  This, I thought, is how great visionaries and poets see everything – as if for the first time.  Each morning they see a new world before their eyes, they do not really see it, they create it.”

The quote is from one of my favourite books, Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis.  To be able to wake up each morning and look at the world as if I were seeing it for the first time, with the wonder of a child taken to a new place, is the blessing I’m now looking forward to.

Each day used to be a delight.  Each morning used to break with promises of new experiences, new challenges and conquests, new learning...  Work was not work but sheer delight. 

Certain things change and turn our world topsy-turvy.  Inevitable, I guess, particularly in times of rapid changes.  Fight, flight, or adapt – one can toy with the classical options for some time.  The decision has to be taken.

I’m trying to be that child on the mountain, looking at a new world, looking at the world in a new way...

It will work, my heart tells me. 



Comments

  1. Yes indeed, Sir.
    Very positive outlook! May we all be blessed!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I follow the same philosophy...at least I try. Each day is a new beginning , a new hope blooming... :-)

    Haven't read the book " Zorba the Greek" ...as it is your favourite...must be a good one..will check it out..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Zorba is a wonderful novel. You'll love it, I'm pretty certain.

      Delete
  3. It will work, if your heart tells you. All the very best. This is the first thing I read this morning.. And feeling like I did the best thing. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. When I was taught in childhood that faith can move mountains, I was extremely sceptical. Now I know its meaning.

      Delete
  4. A morning that starts with such a positive thought (post) has to be be great :) I haven't read the novel you mention, will definitely do so now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad I could get your day started on a good note. Do for Zorba; it's a book I read and reread many times.

      Delete
  5. excellent motivational post sir, I wanted to share a pic with you which portrays something along this line. But looks like I cant over here. So I am sharing the pic which I had posted in quora here. If you still cant view that, may be I will find someother way to send you.

    http://www.quora.com/Cartoons/What-are-the-most-philosophical-cartoons/answer/Niranjan-Goru

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, Niranjan, your picture conveys the same idea that I've put forward in the post. Thanks for the pic.

      Delete
  6. Wow...you said it! I always feel the same and I keep repeating this to my daughter as well. Be positive :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Be Positive, Believe & stand for your choices :-)
    Thanks for this wonderful Post.
    Good wishes

    ReplyDelete
  8. Happiness changes our outlook towards life.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No doubt, Purba. But sometimes despair too can change outlooks. For the change wrought by despair to be good, the person has to have a deeper understanding of self and reality.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10]. A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy. I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possesse

Kailasnath the Paradox

AI-generated illustration It wasn’t easy to discern whether he was a friend or merely an amused onlooker. He was my colleague at the college, though from another department. When my life had entered a slippery slope because of certain unresolved psychological problems, he didn’t choose to shun me as most others did. However, when he did condescend to join me in the college canteen sipping tea and smoking a cigarette, I wasn’t ever sure whether he was befriending me or mocking me. Kailasnath was a bundle of paradoxes. He appeared to be an alpha male, so self-assured and lord of all that he surveyed. Yet if you cared to observe deeply, you would find too many chinks in his armour. Beneath all those domineering words and gestures lay ample signs of frailty. The tall, elegantly slim and precisely erect stature would draw anyone’s attention quickly. Kailasnath was always attractively dressed though never unduly stylish. Everything about him exuded an air of chic confidence. But the wa

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived