An eye for an eye makes the world blind....

Has it ever crossed your mind that if you were to attack someone, physically or verbally, you would not be able to get away unscathed by, at least, a retort?

It is a normal animal reaction to external stimulus to respond to anything that might threaten its existence or cause any sort of harm. It is, but, only natural to react to anything that that happens around us.

Let us take, for example, a bully trying to make someone weaker listen to them, or make them finish their homework, or whatever. The victim has two choices. The first one, being, to listen to the bully and do whatever he says, or, stand up to him, punch him in the face, and let him know that you will not oblige him. The second option leading to a brawl and then detention over the weekend.

I am not asking you to condone bullying, or give in to it. But there are other options that can be used to come around this problem.

Speaking on the national front, we see a lot of communal violence. One community rages violence against another and then the other must get back. It makes sense for once..... but just once. The long term repercussions are difficult to handle.

First, one party fights. Then the other must retaliate. Then the other must respond and so on and so forth. Ever wondered where it would end?? Oh, yes, it would end. Just not very nicely. We will end up punching each other till we fall.

Violence is not the answer to violence. Did not the great Mahatma send the British packing with his non violence? This great example of non violent response did what centuries of violence could not do.

Then why resort to violence every time. We know what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We know what happened at Pearl Harbour. We know what happened when Hitler tried to annihilate the Jews.

Despite the fact that retaliating with violence was never a good solution we still imagine that if we were under international threat we would use our nuclear weapons to drive them away. If we all started using nuclear weapons against each other we would end up ruining everything the earth has to offer. Then we would not only not have any enemies, we would also not have any friends.

An eye for an eye is not a solution. It is the fuel for an ongoing struggle which will remain a struggle as long as there is anyone to sustain it.

The learning process

We all learn from our experiences. Experience being the best teacher. There is no point in time when there is nothing new for us. We may not grow so old as to say that we are aware of everything in the world. We not only grow mentally everyday, every minute, every second- we progress spritually, emotionally and physically. Every pain we suffer teaches us something new. Every smile we smile teaches us something new. Every morning we wake up we wake up to a new day.

The novelty of the new keeps us striving. When we feel that there is nothing for us to know in this world we lose all enthusiasm for living.

There is nothing constant, but change. And every change we are subjected to gives us some thing new to learn.

If a particular method of doing something has stopped showing results, we invent new ways of doing that particular task. We learn to keep up with the times. The human hunger for knowledge keeps us longing for more.

Never has there been a time in the history of human civillization when there has been a slump in inventions and discoveries. We learn more everytime there is something new to learn.

We grow, we learn. We know that there is not other way to survive. As we form new relationships, change jobs, or even keep a new pet, we are constantly learning to adapt, to work and to modify our attitudes.

The process of learning never ends. It goes on till the time we breathe our last.

Music........

Listening to music is such a relief from the hectic lives we live. Many would echo this sentiment. For some people like me, there are no boundaries for music. We can listen to just anything , as long as it pleases the ears.

Well, choice varies among listeners. There are some who like to listen to music which other's find utterly revolting. Well most music is heavenly to my ears. Yes, even that earthquake inducing metal rock, that seems nice sometimes. Loud, soft, fast, slow, all work for me. Well, most of the time they do.

Music works towards a balance in the mind. Lots of good music has been composed for any and every type of mood. And it does not come as a surprise that music is the healer of the soul. Well, of course with other things like time and love and the other stuff too, the soul is healed. But, I will just dwell on music.

Music calms, soothes, invigorates, energizes and does a lot of those things to the human psyche that other things cannot.

The next thing I write you about music will go against all I ever thought about music. No, no, music is just the same for me always. It's just this kind of music that i am going to talk about. Well, the place where I heard this dreaded music was in the Art Room, back in school. Boy! Did we all hate it! The music was supposed to help us channel our creativity and sketch our hearts out. In fact, right now I am listening to some, pretty loud, music. But it's fueling the creativity. Unlike the music that was almost heart rending and did just the opposite to our creative flow.

I will indulge in some grovelling and complain about that music that grated on the nerves at a time when the requirement stated a calm and balanced environment. I am not able to put a finger on the culprit of our discomfort, but I can enumerate the suspects. The music player that played the music was a suspicious specimen that probably dated, or that's what I thought then, to prehistoric times...... Fanciful thinking....... I suppose the music played pretty well on any other player because our art teacher rather liked that piece of music and played it despite our protests to change the music to hip hop or rock.

The recording could have been faulty. Turning the more deeper sounds to scratchy noises that put our teeth on edge. Some of the tunes sounded like someone was scratching in the surface of the blackboard........ It was not our fault if we did not get our proportions correct on the drawing sheets if everytime the music took a high turn and our pencils flew out of our hands!!

Another suspect, I believe, would be the acoustics of the room. Whatever it was. Whether it was the cement- brick ratio, or the cement- sand ratio, or the glass in the windows that threw back such tormenting sound at us, I do not know. We were tortured. Unable to defend ourselves of the horrible sound, we were accused of not appreciating music if we covered our ears!!!!

Till today I feel that if I had to listen to that music again, I would flatly refuse. Not because I would not like it, but because it will bring back memories of mental pain that was endured at the hands of this music. However, if you made me listen to it without my knowing that it is the same music I do not know what I would think of it.

All along the way.

When I was a little child I used to think that the only thing keeping us from getting spanked by our parents was the fear of the pain that would accompany the spanking. We would not care for any other reproach, but a spanking was out of the question.
As children we were very naughty, like all children are. But our trysts ended with the stern warning of a spanking.
We liked to play outside and would often forget the time when we had to be back home. We played, savouring every moment of that juvenile pleasure that conveniently eludes us now. And we did not realise that we had taken liberties with our curfew till we heard my uncle yelling our names in the colony. That moment, that precise point in time when we heard our names, saw us like frightened deer caught in the sudden glare of headlights of an oncoming vehicle.
And then, heaven knows, how we ran back home, taking the most out of the way route so that our uncle did not catch us.
We would be at home by the time our uncle returned and we would try and act indifferent to the whole thing. As if nothing had happened, and as if whatever was going on did not have the slightest inclusion of our deeds. We did it not because we were professional con artistes. We feared the spanking.

Today, a decade later, things are no different. Only the consequences are different. We do not get spanked anymore, but as the mistakes grow so do the punishments. We are not bound to be spanked everytime we overshoot the deadline, or we do not get spanked if we do not return home on time, but life has its own ways and means to get to us. We outgrow the spanking, we outgrow the scoldings, not because they become non-existant as we grow, but because we have bigger things to fear. Bigger punishments to face, bigger follies to commit....

Unwilling....

There are more resons to not do something than to do it.
It hardly matters how it effects others. We, sometimes, do things that we cannot explain. There is an urge or just absent mindedness. We are excused for these lapses in logic by our own interpretation of why such incedents occur.
We are at some point regulators of our own actions. During this point we, still, unfailingly fail in attempting our task.
Who are we to blame? Ourselves? Is there the slightest possibility that we may attribute our failure to ourselves?
Hardly.
Do we realise that the rut we create for ourselves is the rut we can get ourselves out of too?
There again there is the question of whether we understand the gravity of it or not. Or whether we are willing to accept the follies of our own doing.