Saturday, March 5, 2011

In celebration of being alive

In celebration of being alive.
Way back when I was in school, there was this "lesson" in the English text book titled, "In celebration of being alive", by Dr. Christian Barnard (yes, the first surgeon to perform a heart transplant). I was moved by the story then, as a kid I always thought I have everything in life and I will be very rich, famous and beautiful :) as I was good, obedient, hardworking and helpful child... Well as I grew up i realized it was not that easy...ok not drifting from what I want to write today... I remembered this English lesson and wanted to stress  up on the fact... WE all must celebrate the life we are gifted with... Life is short and very unpredictable.. All of us get involved so much in the mundane activities, we forget that in our struggle for existence we ignore the key essence of celebrating the fact.. Life is beautiful, joyful, and full of lessons, sorrow to teach its value... But we make it ugly, for our selfish interests, motives, we get jealous, we do mockery, we hurt people, pull people down.. Or simply hate few with no reason and bring them down... Lie, betray...I mean.. We do all unimaginable things.....

I don't remember the exact story, but it was something on these lines: The setting was that of a hospital dorm full of children. A blind boy and his friend who doesn't have a leg are playing the push-cart game. The blind boy is pushing the cart on which the disabled boy is seated and is steering it as well as guiding the blind boy. The rest of the crowd cheers them. Many of them don't have a lot of time with them. Dr. Barnard is surprised to see all of them happy.

The essay is very aptly titled, "In celebration of being alive". That, in my opinion is the ultimate form of optimism. And needless to say, it is some task to maintain that levels of optimism.

Whenever something even remotely related to "lacking" in one’s life is presented to me, the black and white illustration in my text book of the push-cart game flashes for a moment before my eyes
The reason why I’m quoting DR Christian Barnard is.. 1- We must value life and celebrate it 2- We must always do good deeds and HURT NO ONE ever.. Because we never know if we will even ever see that person.. Today's post is in dedication for two strangers.. Both young women, full of life... but passed away in mysterious conditions..

I was very moved by an incident which happened couple of days ago.. My neighbour who was in late twenties... had some illness and recovered.. I met her two weeks ago... she was fine.. She said "priya, I got your post" postman delivered it to my place ... and day before yesterday...I learnt she is no more....

A similar thing happened when I was at Indiranagar house. Land lady.. Beautiful and ever smiling and most helpful ... just was gone.....

I want to dedicate this post for these two women and I pray that their soul gets salivation and God takes care of their families....

All. Love life and never hurt a soul... not trying to give gyan here... being logical...... an amazing trainer told the class.. We have 84.5 + million births.. Not sure if there are so many births but... All i know is we have one life!!!

4 comments:

  1. Hey, nice read.

    Apparently, I've been thinking about the same story.
    About the push-cart game, the children play a game trying to imitate a grand-pix car.

    Do you have any clue if it was just a story in our textbook or is it a book by Dr Shaw ?

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  2. hey i liked ur thought veryyyy much.. helped me in my public speech for tommorow.. sorry for copying..

    SANTOSH KIRAN

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  3. Well covered. You said it right.

    What you have, often, appear like oxygen in air; you don't realize it's value until you run out of it.

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  4. Hey Priyanka Rao--
    the lesson is " In celebration of being alive"- 10th class English text book.
    That was my first taste of philosophy, thru' this great man's words.

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