Watching a movie alone.

"As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.


Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.


Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.


And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean."

9.37 pm, 23 Nov 2006, Atlanta Georgia


Thanks Giving holiday today. The city streets are practically deserted. I have been in the hotel all day long, reading, chatting then sleeping a little.
Get up around 6 pm...maybe I can drop in at a colleague place or maybe just go somewhere by myself.
I set out in my car to drive around a little...no particular plans. Maybe go to the Indian Store or grab some dinner at Panda Express. The shops, restaurants look closed as I drive by and then more out of habit then anything else I go into AMC and Barnes & Nobles. Quite a few people here.

I am just in time for the 7.10 pm show of Stranger Than Fiction. I grab a coke and pick a nice seat in the auditorium.A few trailers later the movie begins. Two hours of gripping storytelling...the message in the end ?

Well simply that life is worth living, even if just for a taste of a Bavarian cookie...sometimes the mundane and the routine things which we usually overlook are things that inadvertently fill our hearts with joy. The taste of brownie bites, reading poetry, your first crush...all worth living for, even if life is not always smooth sailing.

Clueless

"I can get no satisfaction..."

The lines keep playing in my head over and over again...and no it’s not because I can't get any girlie action!!
It is simply because I don't know what will give me satisfaction.
Is it a family, a house full of kids and a life full of chores ?
Though that might be the need of the hour but I am certain that vegetating like that can keep me happy for a few months maybe even a few years but beyond that it does not seem likely.
One day I would surely look back on the years gone past and contemplate that I have missed out on so much..
In the words of Vikram Seth:

"Awake for hours and staring at the ceiling
Through the unsettled stillness of the night
He grows possessed of the obsessive feeling
That dawn has come and gone and brought no light."

So then should I immerse myself in my career ? Get a higher education and a cushy job ?
Well I have spent 21 years of my life studying and the next 4 yrs working...and what do I have to show for that.
A salary at the end of the month and an endless wait for the next weekend. Is it because my job does not present the challenges I hoped for ?
Most likely that is a problem with our education system or society, but the chain reaction that it has triggered is that I now believe that breaking my head for a higher educations entails only rigors and no rewards. And a chushy job translates to another hackneyed 9-5 routine. A new set of bosses to work for and a new set of colleagues.
Does not seem much different from my present situation, does it ? And then I would regret not having spent time with family and on a healthy personal life. And yet again Vikram Seth's lines seem apt..

Well maybe then I should stick to the boring job that I have and start a family. That way, I will have the best of both worlds....or is it the worst ?
Being content with this looks perfectly simple. But if this existence makes me feel purposeless then this is no solution. I would compare myself to friends who are into rocket science or some such high end technology stuff. And I would also compare myself to people who are immersed in their family and are happy.
The trouble is that these are two extremes and no one can be stretched so much as to be perfect in both.
Maybe many of the people in these situations are not happy themselves...what do we know ?

The trick is not in doing what other people do or what society deems as the right thing to do, but rather in finding your passion and following it.
If I had a passionate interest in anything that would be my life's goal and the rest of the things would be peripheral.
Artists, scientists, great writers all follow their passion with a mad devotion, and perhaps they taste the nectar of satisfaction or at least momentary highs of a job well done.

Well then the problem is fairly simple we just need to discover our passion. But the solution is not easy to come by, may even take a lifetime.
And what if some of us have no passion at all?

Maybe its only temporal things for such people then like sex, booze, drugs that can do the trick. It is the shortcut to satisfaction even if it lasts only for a fleeting moment.
No wonder then that so many people would vouch for these shortcuts!