Don't be in awe of any asshole...
Recognise bullshit as bullshit...
Step back and look at the bigger picture...
Know that everything's in transition...
Do your work..count your blessings...
When thousand voices bark, listen to your common sense...
A spade is a spade and the emperor is naked.
The 'Thin red line' joins my list of half- abandoned movies. Not that it's bad or unwatchable but I just couldn't find the initiative to continue watching it. So, after 20 minutes, I switched off the tv and drifted into a good sleep, lulled by the faint splutter of the midnight drizzle.
There are many similar movies and even more number of books which couldn't take me along upto the end. Earlier I used to feel guilty for not finishing them, for not doing justice to the contents--as if the book would feel bad for my actions or as if I'm answerable to the filmmaker. A recent realization is that not only is it wrong to stick on to a bad(?) book /movie/job but it's also a criminal act against ones own soul. Stretch beyond a point where you feel 'enough' and soon you'll begin to sense a faint nausea. Ignore it for too long and you get used to that, so, ultimately you'll be plodding amidst a lot of yucky things.
Then it becomes important to stop right there, say 'enough' and actually get out of it. And it takes a bit of balls too. When you realise that you're in wrong company, its only fair that you shut the book, switch off the movie, prepare your cv...etc
Maybe, just maybe, this applies to every other aspect of Life too. When the entire world says 'stay in the herd' but your heart says 'watchout'....what do you do? Play it safe, continue the game and ignore the nausea that keeps building up? Or gather the nerves to follow your wisdom?
From a small act of shutting down an unreadable book to many other challenges, we face innumerable dilemmas and paradoxes at every step of the journey. Do this or do that, stop here or continue for some more time, follow the herd-instinct or listen to that inner voice...? Maybe it's not easy to generalise or find simple answers to all of them. Personally, I'd say, 'keep the bull-shit detector on and when your heart yells out, be unafraid to say thank you for everything but now... fuck off'.
Because, the Universe always takes care of you, no matter what. Life has no full stops, damnit!
Suddenly she looked up and asked,'Why are we discussing them over and over? Is there nothing else to talk about?'
She was right. I had become obsessed with those two scumbags from the past few days. All of our talks were revolving around them, their past deeds, their current misadventures, the future disasters they might bring about, etc. Although I didn't tell her, it was the outrage, disgust, helplessness I was feeling about many related issues that bothered me as much as the events themselves. It was as if something had hit me, penetrated and passed right through me in the heart, taking away all that I'd held dear over the years. It was like waking up one morning to realise that you weren't a human being at all but a piece of dirt which had been dreaming all along. Like the ground on which you stand didn't exist any longer and you were in a free fall into a never ending abyss. Much worse than that.
'Life isn't just this. There are a hundred other dreams with us. Let us focus on them. Let us continue our journey and leave the rest for God to take care...'
Not easy. Not easy.
Things fall apart
the center cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosend upon the world
The blood dimm'd tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity
......
-W B Yeats
