Why are boys so mean? Why do they always break our heart so? .... :)

Us, Morning Birds

We all have a morning routine. We are, after all, creatures of habit. I have noticed that our most peculiar habits are centered around what we do when we just wake up. I’m sure we all have our peculiarities.

Some of these peculiarities I have not been able to forget. I have known someone who’s very first task of the day used to be to smoke a cigarette so he could go to the loo (it used to make him ‘go’). Another friend of mine does not like to be talked to when she eats her morning cereal. I know a lot of people can’t seem to truly wake up till they’ve had their morning coffee. In Kerala (Indian state), the men wake up at 4 AM, take a bath and rush to the temple to pray. Whatever else they have to do comes after that. Some read the morning paper first thing, the world won’t function if they don’t find out what’s going on in it as soon as they wake.

My morning routine used to be a cup of coffee while I stared out of the window, and spent the time planning the day in my mind. My coffee and my solitude were all I needed after a good night’s sleep to make the rest of the day productive. Ofcourse now with my ten month old son scooting around the house demanding my attention, that solitary quarter is hard to find. Now the day starts and ends with catering to his every need. But I consider this a routine too. Soon enough I will fit right back into my morning coffee routine, and then I will miss this. Don’t we all?

To Forgive, Divine...

To forgive, they say, is divine. To err, human.

If we go by this, being human sounds like a cakewalk. Being divine, though, is a hell of a task. Do you find it easy to forgive? I admit I don’t.

Forgiveness is considered to be the noblest thing to do. It benefits not just who you have forgiven, but also yourself. You are finally past the anger that had become you. You have let go of the past and found hope again. I know they talk about the virtue of forgiveness in a lot of spiritual teachings.

As glorious as it sounds, it’s so damn difficult to let go of all the hurt! It’s a long long journey, and such a difficult one. Sometimes it may not turn out to be worth it, and sometimes so totally worth it.

I for one, have erred (I fit very well into the human race), have been forgiven, have been erred against, and have forgiven too. All of this has been quite a journey, but the most difficult and lengthy journey of all has been when I had to forgive myself. A person has such high expectations from oneself that when you goof up, you disappoint yourself the most of all.

I know that life will always demand that we let go and forgive. It has been tough, and it’s never going to get any easier. But that doesn’t mean we won’t have to do it anymore. Well, no joke being divine!  

Smart Enough?

I don’t know if it’s a good thing or bad, but we live in an age where even phones have an IQ (back in the days there were dumb phones, then came the smart ones, and then the smarter ones…now there’s no end to how smart they can get, the only limitation being your budget). We spend hundreds to have ourselves always surrounded by these gizmos. It’s almost as if we pay to let ourselves be lazy. Ofcourse the technical term for it is ‘convenience’.

So when was the last time any of us did a mental calculation of 12 times 16? Wouldn’t we rather reach out for our phone instead? The phone being so smart, would compute it for us in microseconds, add about 5 seconds to type 12X16. Now that’s our money’s worth.

But are the green bills the only price we pay to have so much convenience a click away? Aren’t we providing our own brains less exercise and more stress? We have transferred our brains’ little challenges onto these seemingly convenient and jazzy toys. We are paying to let our phones get smarter while we get stupider.

That being said, there’s no doubt that a machine can never be as intelligent as a human brain. Smart, maybe, but intelligent, never. Even then, we need to perhaps reassess our overdependence on technology. Being intelligent is good, being smart as well, even better.