Skip to main content

Undo Button


If there were an undo button in life, what would I undo?  This is the question raised by Anjana at Indiblogger this week.

Wishing to undo something is a sign of regret.  There are many things in my life that I have reasons to regret. But I choose not to regret.  I go with Don Juan, the “Man of Knowledge” in Carlos Castaneda’s many inspiring books, who advised us not to regret but make decisions.  Regrets don’t achieve anything.  To err is human.  To forgive or not to forgive is also human.  Forgetting certain errors makes life easier.  Learning from certain errors makes us wiser.  Undoing errors is only wishful thinking.  There is no undo button in life.

Could I undo my birth?  The ultimate absurdity of human endeavours would have made me wish that.  But I don’t want to be a Hamlet oscillating between a harsh reality and an undesirable alternative.  Nor am I pining for the Buddhist nirvana since nirvana is the inevitable end of every human being as far as I understand human life.  I am caught in the cycles of desire and delusion like all normal human beings.  I know that I have to move from one desire to the next, from one delusion to the next, until nirvana will descend on me one day as naturally as the leaf falls from the tree.  I hope the fall will be elegant. Graceful. 

In the meanwhile the leaf has to face the winds that blow and the showers that refresh.  The seasons cannot be undone.  The planets have to follow Newton’s laws of gravity.  Newton cannot be undone.  The stars will continue to shine until they burn out.  Gravitational collapses cannot be undone.  Black holes swallow their own light. 

We live in a black hole.  The event horizon surrounds us.  It warps light rays.  There is no undo button.


Labels:

Comments

  1. Ravish ManiMay 26, 2015 at 2:59 PM

    Learning from mistakes is wisdom not deleting the trails of mistake. Very apt point made. And very true that Nirvana descends on oneself. One cannot seek Nirvana.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 26, 2015 at 5:11 PM

      There is no option either but to learn and go ahead toward nirvana.

      Delete
  2. Ashish KumarMay 26, 2015 at 7:02 PM

    A post which is motivational and portraying a message to move forward.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 26, 2015 at 8:57 PM

      Inspired by my current situation which demands movement forward from the surrounding event horizon.

      Delete
  3. Roohi BhatnagarMay 26, 2015 at 11:29 PM

    I completely agree. Once a decision made, never look back that's a resolution I have taken after witnessing one of my dear one regretting for every single decision in life!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 27, 2015 at 7:27 AM

      Looking back and regretting is not only a waste of time but also a killer of mental peace.

      Delete
  4. UnknownMay 27, 2015 at 12:14 AM

    I liked it when you accepted the fact that we live with desires and delusions. I too want Nirvana to come naturally into my life. I cannot force it. I cannot stop myself from beng natural and normal. No one can do it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 27, 2015 at 7:29 AM

      Living our life to the best of our capacities will take us to the final grace gracefully.

      Delete
  5. UnknownMay 27, 2015 at 4:50 AM

    I totally belief in the Black Hole Theory. We can never undo the actions we have done or beyond our control. Saying so there is always a Positive outcome fro every situation will come to Light as time passes by.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 27, 2015 at 7:31 AM

      In the black holes too there is light but it has its limits.

      Delete
  6. Pooja MahimkarMay 27, 2015 at 11:58 AM

    This makes me wonder what Ill do if I get an undo button. Life would be so much more easier

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 27, 2015 at 1:14 PM

      Don't worry; undo buttons exist only on gadgets and life is not a gadget. Yes, some things in life can be undone with forgiveness, understanding and acceptance. But who wants those things nowadays?

      Delete
  7. IraMay 27, 2015 at 1:38 PM

    "Undoing errors is only wishful thinking..." So true . It is a mirage that that never meets the thirsty man. The imperfections give the life it's hopes and desires.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Nima DasMay 27, 2015 at 2:55 PM

    A very thoughtful read. But we all wish life had an undo button,and they remain just wishes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 27, 2015 at 6:21 PM

      Wishes can take other forms too, can't they? For the future, for example?

      Delete
  9. UnknownMay 28, 2015 at 12:57 AM

    It's true we can only move forward and there's no undo button. Even if there were, there's no certainty that fixing an old mistake *will* lead you to a better life... Live and learn...

    ReplyDelete
  10. Bushra MuzaffarMay 28, 2015 at 8:16 AM

    Delightful read. My thoughts and perspective resonated with almost the entire post. Ya totally agree...no need for an undo button. Just move on :)

    ReplyDelete
  11. Sunita SriramMay 28, 2015 at 1:58 PM

    Appreciate your perspective but an undo button not to reset the events but for us to contemplate and set right our wrongs may not be bad after all!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 28, 2015 at 3:12 PM

      How many wrongs will be righted? How many can be? Learning from the past, yes. But anything else may turn out to be futile.

      Delete
  12. UppalMay 28, 2015 at 6:05 PM

    Liked your analysis!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 28, 2015 at 8:19 PM

      Uppal, even my missionary benefactors are yet to decide whether I have an analytic or synthetic mind. :)

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...
2 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...
19 comments
Read more

Truths of various colours

You have your truth and I have mine. There shouldn’t be a problem – until someone lies. Unfortunately, lying has been elevated as a virtue in present India. There are all sorts of truths, some of which are irrefutable. As a friend said the other day with a little frustration, the eternal truth is this: No matter how many times you check, the Wi-Fi will always run fastest when you don’t actually need it – and collapse the moment you’re about to hit Submit . Philosophers call it irony. Engineers call it Murphy’s Law. The rest of us just call it life. Life is impossible without countless such truths. Consider the following; ·       Change is inevitable. ·       Mortality is universal. ·       Actions have consequences. [Even if you may seem invincible, your karma will catch up, just wait.] ·       Water boils at 100 o C under normal atmospheric pressure. ·    ...
11 comments
Read more