Hopelessly Hopeful

How would you define grief? Is that an emotion where you feel extreme pain of loss or mourn for something that is lost forever? In whatever manner you want to see it, there is one thing that is common, the excruciating pain, the pain that threatens to tear you apart and make you a walking dead. You feel that extreme anguish and often want to hang on to it, because somehow that grief becomes a thread that binds you to your loss, it makes everything real, that final straw that you don't want to let go. No one can understand what one has lost, it is deeply personal. The piercing pain is theirs and you cannot partake in it. But, you know you can silently stand besides them, wrap your arms around their shoulders and wipe off those tears. You know you can do that, don't you?

What if life is just about moments. You live in one moment and then hop on to the other, without any connection between the two. It is just a series of moments that you live in. But, we mess up these moments with our past experiences or future expectations. And, that is when the problem arises, that's when the complication starts. When you live in the present, you don't worry about what happened 10 years ago or what would happen 10 years hence. The simple fact is, what happened could not be undone and what is going to happen we have no control over it. So, why worry and waste what we have today - the present, the current, the moment to live in. From the Buddha to Osho, everyone advocated this mantra . And, maybe, with practice we can live in the moment, in this present time and soak in it - the associated happiness or the sadness.

At one end of a flyover, I saw men, women, kids fighting to get a bucket of drinking water At the other end, I saw sprinklers spraying gallons of water on lush lawns and gardens What do we need - essentials or aesthetic values?

"The moment you're ready to quit is usually the moment right before a miracle happens . Don't give up .” No one knows who said that, but everyone knows that it is true. Still, how many of us really hang in there – in the dark pit, at the lowest ebb, not giving up hope to do whatever it takes to fulfill our dreams? When the life-giving oxygen is depleted, the throat is so dry that you can’t even utter a word, you forget what hunger really means, that is when you are shown some quick fixes, some quick way outs. What do you do? Take those detours or still hang in there, testing your endurance, just because you have a dream to live. I say hang in there, miracles happen, you just need to believe in yourself...