Losing innocence - Aimless meanderings!

Nostalgia strikes more often at inopportune times when one is sad. Recently I read that happiness is something that we realize in hindsight after the event responsible for it has ended. How true it is! When we identify that we are happy, it flies off, elusive and out of grasp...

I am back home after a good three months and everything feels so alien and so intimate at the same time. Talking to friends I realized that even though we hadn't seen each other for some time, things have rarely changed. We chatted away like the good buddies we are and topics weren't hard to come by and conversation didn't cease for a minute. There wasn't any uncomfortable silence. I have eperienced it only with people that I have spent reasonable time with.

I do feel that social networking and its cousins have made the word "Friend" so commonplace that its meaning sometimes gets lost. Some things take time to happen and friendship is certainly one of them. Unless one spends time with someone, gets to know the person they are slowly and begin to share with them events in one's life, and they in turn, the events in their lives, friendhsip will not get nurtured.

It is also important that compatibility is not so often about sharing the same likes and interest than about a tolerant nature that is willing to give the other person enough space. Incompatibility, the word that is bandied about so readily is more a sign of impatience than real conflict. Today, we are so conscious of time and so selfish to pursue our own interests that we find that we are also becoming increasingly impatient, with ourselves and with others. As a result, we lose the ability to see things as they are. Inconsiderate behavior, marked by glaring insensitivity to other's feelings, a brutal hurry to get things done at any cost and placing one's own interest at the foremost of everything - these are all consequences of a lifestyle that we have come to adopt.

That certain people think they can get away with anything and everything by attributing rude behavior to a sense of business is pathetic. Aggression and testosterone can get people only so far. Sadly, due to a premium placed on the ends rather than the means, sensitivity and concern take backseats and aggression gets rewarded leading to a vicious cycle.

The whole point of this post is that we are losing our innocence and falling prey to a way of life that breeds indifference, intolerance and hatred. If we look at ourselves in childhood, surely we can learn a lot of lessons. Some memories never lose their freshness and remain evergreen in those crevices of the mind that nothing can penetrate them and steal them away! There was no malice in the games we played, no hate in the words we spoke. Instead there was a hope that we nurtured, a hope for a tomorrow full of brightness and color. We surely believed that there would be competition, but perhaps never realized that it would be at a great cost!

Is love the opposite of hate and is freedom the opposite of slavery? Not at all! In defining love and freedom like this, we delude ourselves into believing that we love each other and we are free when the reality is starkly different. We can fool ourselevs as long as we don't want to confront the truth! Money, fame and rewards are not equal to peace of mind and ultimately that is what counts! The means and not the ends!!!!