Collecting Hobbies

I was having a discussion with my daughter about collecting various things and why people have such kind of hobbies. I told her that I used to collect stamps. My daughter collects erasers and I was making fun of that. I asked her, whats the point of collecting erasers. And then I was trying to explain why people collect stamps. I was explaining that they are like memorials for people or places (less expensive). People used to use a lot of stamps for sending letters in those days when there was no mobile and internet. So it would be a good idea to create memorials in the form of stamps that will be used by a lot of people on a daily basis. So the more stamps people collect, the more memorials or stories they are collecting.

My daughter heard this argument and she told one line in support of hers. She told "daddy, erasers remind us that it's ok to make mistakes in life". And she rested her case :)

The sun that rises

I had the opportunity of sitting on the deck of a cruise ship and watching the sun rise. It was one of the most beautiful things I have experienced. Initially it was dark with little clouds. I was worried that I will not be able to see the sun rise. Slowly it started turning orange and later on, the color of the sky changed to bright white light. As if everything was absolutely ready for the sun. Still no sign of the sun. It started turning to bright orange again at the far end of east. The sky started to light up. I felt as if the sky was overwhelmed with joy and everything was lit up. There were few clouds still blocking the view. As the sun started rising, I could see an intense ball of light. The light was so intense, that it can just knock down any sign of darkness. It could just make everything visible, even the things I haven't been able to see. It was amazing to view the first glimpse of the sun rising up. Then I thought if something or somebody is as bright as the sun they can only shine. Neither the clouds nor anything in the world can stop that.

Once the sun came up, it felt like the sea was very happy with a bright colored carpet laid out inviting sun to come onto the earth. I always thought religion should take you closer to the god.  A doubt arises in my mind, may be we did not understand the religion properly.  when religion said, offer prayers to sun in the morning, it was just trying to make us feel absorbed into the experience of watching the sun rise every single day. Who would have thought, that I will get these kind of ideas sitting on the deck of the most luxurious ship. Then I thought may be meditation is not an answer to everything we are facing in life. "LIVING YOUR LIFE" is.

Yellow lines

It's been a while since I wrote something. As I keep driving every day on the roads, it made me think about the yellow lines on the road. They seem to be so powerful that you will not even think about going on the other side of the road. We have been trained to think that they are powerful, trained to not even think of crossing those lines. But at the same time, they are just lines. Just lines. Equally unimportant and no power.

When you think about it, our relationships are like yellow lines. They are just lines, but yet, so powerful that they would never let us cross them.

I am not suggesting anybody to cross the lines. But realizing that they are just lines will ease the burden of relationships we are all carrying

Story telling

I was playing a game with my daughter where in I told her that I will state some facts and she has to spin a story based off of the facts. So I stated the following facts (given in the next paragraph) and asked her to spin different stories based on the stated facts. (This is just an exercise, the facts may or may not be true)

Albert Einstein's wife was Mileva Einstein. She was the only woman in physics department at Zurich Polytechnic where Albert Einstein studied. In fact she was the only person to score higher than Einstein in Mathematics. She got married to Einstein and has a significant contribution in Albert Einstein's research. But history never remembered his wife. On the other hand Marie curie's husband Pierre  curie was also a scientist. When Nobel prize committee wrote him a letter informing him that he had won a Nobel prize, Pierre asked if his wife was also going to be honored. But he was told only  him would be honored. He wrote to the committee acknowledging the honor but rejecting it as his wife was not included in the honor. He said the papers he wrote has significant input from his wife. The committee budged and gave the Nobel prize to both the husband and wife

Story1: Albert Einstein is a bad man because he did not care about what his wife did for him and only wanted to carry on with his own agenda and that he was really selfish. On the other hand  Marie Curie's husband was a really good man because he wanted to give credit for what Marie Curie deserved.

Story2: Albert Einstein was a really good man because what if Albert Einstein has checked with his wife and she did not want any attention/credit because she was one of those people who would not feel happy with all the attention. On the other hand Marie Curie's husband was a really bad man because he didn't check if Marie was ok with all the credit and attention. what if Marie did not want to be famous in which case Pierre Curie did it without her permission.

Story3: Albert Einstein may be neither good nor bad. He would have been too much involved with what he was doing and didn't even bother about anything else. Marie's husband was a horrible man because what if he thought about it and he knew that being famous could have some really bad problems and he did not want to face those problems alone so he pulled Marie into it with him.


Interesting right.

Looking forward to

Most of the times I noticed that looking forward to a particular day or an event or a trip is more happier and fun than the actual event or a trip. If we can create something to look forward to at frequent intervals in our life, that will definitely bring more happiness to our overall being

Strange feeling

Lately I have been feeling that I am moving away from my real being.  This is making me very uncomfortable and sad. But at the the same time, it is allowing me to see what I really am, making it possible to know exactly what I want. Without moving away from my real nature would not have made it possible to see what I really want out of life or define who I really am.

For example if you want to see the earth in total you have to move away from it. This is the only way you could see the earth in totality. I have been struggling with this feeling for quite some time. But we just have to understand that moving away is necessary.

Once you have it good in your thought, the path is laid. you just have to trust the journey.

My daughter's definition of meditation

Let me remind (myself) that my daughter is 8 years old. One day we were having a casual conversation about various things and suddenly it led to talking about meditation. Then my daughter started explaining like this.

Daddy, we have so many feelings in our brain. We have patience, kindness, anger, love, fear etc. All these feelings are like different pieces in a puzzle. But we don't know what those pieces are. She continued, for example we don't know if we are kind or not or how kind we are. Only others have to tell us how kind we are. Similarly we don't know about our anger. Only others have to tell us whether we are angry or not or how angry we are. So she explained meditation is all about knowing all the pieces in your brain and putting them all together. It's like solving the puzzle.

At this point, I understood that it's all about knowing who you really are.

Guy at the bus stop

I always feel curious about how my 8 year old daughter thinks, her thinking patterns, her logic etc. So whenever I get a chance, I keep trying to find ways to know that. Below is the actual conversation that happened with my daughter. I wanted to write this in a conversational mode (my questions and her answers)

Q1: I asked my daughter, Imagine a scenario where you are a guy standing at a bus stop waiting to go for your job interview. You saw another person coming on a bike. Suddenly he lost his balance, fell down and got hurt badly. what would you do? Would you go for the job interview or save him.

A1: I would help the guy who is hurt instead of going for the job interview

Q2: I wanted to increase the toughness in decision making. I said, you have been waiting for your dream job for more than 7 years and its a sure shot which means that if you attend the interview, you will get your dream job. What would you do now?

A2: I would still go and help the guy who is hurt because life is more important than a job

Q3: I increased the difficulty further. I told that, YOU, who is waiting for the job interview, are from a very poor family. You have two siblings, mom and a dad to feed. They are waiting for your job so that they can have basic life necessities. Now what would you do?

A3: Now I will go for the job interview because feeding or giving life to 4 people is important than saving one. So definitely job interview

Q4: I Increased the difficulty further. I said, YOU, who is waiting for the job interview, are not from a poor family. Your family is not dependent on you for their food. But the guy who fell down from the bike is a really bad guy. You already know that he has hurt several people. You really wouldn't want to save him. Now what would you do?

A4: I would still go and save the guy who is hurt. As an example, if there is a bully trying to hurt other people, we need to save the person who is bullying and the person who is getting bullied. Because we don't know why the bully is behaving that way and what made him to bully other people. So I would still go and save the guy who is hurt

This answer just blew my mind. One surprised dad.