Tomichan Matheikal's blog

A friend sent me an e-book this afternoon: The Gift of Years by Joan Chittister. I’ve only read the introduction and I think I’ll love this book which is about old age. Growing Older Gracefully is its subtitle. The author questions in the introduction the general notion about life being one linear progression from birth to death. “What we did yesterday, what we do today, cannot be undone.” This is deadly thinking, Chittister says. It sets our future in cement by freezing our successes and failures in eternal measures. Fixed once and for all. “My life has been nothing but a series of new beginnings,” she asserts. Every day can be a new day, a new beginning. This moment can be a new beginning. As I was reading this part of the introduction, a parable from Tony D’Mello came to my mind. I’m modifying the parable a bit to avoid the hunting mentioned in the original. I don’t like the idea of anyone shooting down a bird. So I shall make it an innocuous ball. A man was training his ...

Dale Carnegie gave us the parable of the two men who looked out from prison bars. “One saw the mud, the other saw stars.” What we see is often our choice. We can choose to see the mud or we can choose to look at the sky. There was once a man who had a dog. He used a strategy for bathing the dog. He would take the dog to the river and throw a ball into the river. Being trained to fetch the ball whenever it was thrown, the dog would jump into the river too and fetch the ball. That swimming would be the dog’s bath. But one day the dog sprang a surprise. When the master threw the ball, the dog, instead of swimming, walked on the water to fetch it. The master was surprised. He threw the ball once again and the dog walked on water again. Maybe, it was an evolutionary step in the dog’s life. The master wanted to show off this to his neighbour. So he asked his neighbour to accompany him to the river. The ball was thrown and the dog fetched it by walking on the river. The neighbour made n...

Horse: If you don’t want to be a caterpillar, how can you become a butterfly? Caterpillar: Did you pass through so many stages before you became a horse? Horse: Not exactly the same stages.  But stages, yes. Caterpillar: Was it hard?  The stages, I mean. Horse: It depends.  Being a caterpillar is not hard for all caterpillars, I guess. Caterpillar: One grows up only by passing through the stages? Horse: One grows real only by passing through the stages. Caterpillar: Real? Horse: Opposite of fraud, let’s say. Caterpillar: Why should anyone be a fraud? Horse: Discontent, I guess.  Not happy being what you are.  Wanting to be something else.  Somebody else. Caterpillar: Like me? Horse: Well.  There are many creatures who are unhappy about what they are.  Who want to be somebody else.  Becoming real is a slow process, I guess.  It needs patience.  Like being a caterpillar crawling on ...