The world is so filled up with all the wise people around us telling us about the glass half-full argument. Optimism has its role to play in making otherwise hostile world around us bearable. We face a particularly obnoxious moment and believe in optimism that it will pass. Yes, it will surely pass, not disputing that. But at times, it is this very optimism which cause the most amount of inertia in life.
I got up in the morning to an early alarm, set primarily to be able to attend the early morning meeting. Having looked at the face of my most precious friend lying so angelic and peaceful. So at peace she now looks in the early morning, it is almost impossible to predict the huge amount of naughtiness that this angelic creature is going to perpetrate during the course of day, So as I rush to catch up with the news paper headlines and in between walk down two floors to get milk from across the road, little do I notice the storm that builds into my chest. As I walked up the stair, what hits me as a large hammer hitting my head right from that beautiful blue sky, is the desperate effort with which I try to keep my breathing in control, and something like a sudden flash of memory. You know, sometime, past appears not in front of you in tranquility and at peace, slowly floating across like a beautiful dream but rather a quick promo of the latest sci-fi movie. It was a similar flash of memory which cut across my thoughts suddenly today morning, the memory of the time when I was doing my masters in Indore, and Indian Coffee House at the Dental college in open premise with only a boundary wall separating from the road passing by. I remembered myself, with my youthful vigor, jumping across the wall, with a cigarette held between my fingers, as it struggled to stay burning and alive..to get a new packet of Wills Navycut.
The thing what I remembered out of it most was the fact that there was suddenly the sun so bright, the kind that makes a very handsome shadow of your body on the Earth, the air was much lighter and breathing was so easy. My wife looked at me as she fixed some breakfast and got the tea, without saying anything. She said nothing and I thought of the pity that must of flown from that kind heart of hers. Oh my, this wreck is the person who could do fifty reps of one hand push ups at one go, the guy with breathings so heavy that it was no longer warm.
I remembered something that the doctors call heart's ejection fraction, which is the measure of the strength of the heart. I remembered that the number he gave me on this medicals was close to the passing marks for the Board exams is not good enough to have. My maternal uncle, who is a cardiac specialist, did tell me that such passing marks call for serious consideration and I did give it it fond discount given the closeness of relation I had with him. But then looking at the google results, I could understand that my optimism of non-happening of a catastrophe is well, just that, optimism. The reality of life is that as I go through every day, working and living as if nothing is wrong, given the precarious number which hangs like Damocles sword over my head, it is sheer luck which ensures that I am every day at the doorstep to ring that bell and watch the hopping dance of my little one. It is this kind of optimism which is a killer, and it is this kind of optimism which needs to be fought against and won against. The comfort cocoon of false well being which I have built around me, because the idea is to escape the hardship which reality imposes on me, is what is to be broken. I need to break it for one reason, if not for anything else is to keep on having the possibility of those clear, naughty eyes looking at me, which I could still look back and latch on to them. No things are not fine, that is false optimism, things are pretty awful and need pretty stiff steps to be taken, that is realism. The Sun must pull all its strength and throw its light across the cloud which stands in between.
I got up in the morning to an early alarm, set primarily to be able to attend the early morning meeting. Having looked at the face of my most precious friend lying so angelic and peaceful. So at peace she now looks in the early morning, it is almost impossible to predict the huge amount of naughtiness that this angelic creature is going to perpetrate during the course of day, So as I rush to catch up with the news paper headlines and in between walk down two floors to get milk from across the road, little do I notice the storm that builds into my chest. As I walked up the stair, what hits me as a large hammer hitting my head right from that beautiful blue sky, is the desperate effort with which I try to keep my breathing in control, and something like a sudden flash of memory. You know, sometime, past appears not in front of you in tranquility and at peace, slowly floating across like a beautiful dream but rather a quick promo of the latest sci-fi movie. It was a similar flash of memory which cut across my thoughts suddenly today morning, the memory of the time when I was doing my masters in Indore, and Indian Coffee House at the Dental college in open premise with only a boundary wall separating from the road passing by. I remembered myself, with my youthful vigor, jumping across the wall, with a cigarette held between my fingers, as it struggled to stay burning and alive..to get a new packet of Wills Navycut.
The thing what I remembered out of it most was the fact that there was suddenly the sun so bright, the kind that makes a very handsome shadow of your body on the Earth, the air was much lighter and breathing was so easy. My wife looked at me as she fixed some breakfast and got the tea, without saying anything. She said nothing and I thought of the pity that must of flown from that kind heart of hers. Oh my, this wreck is the person who could do fifty reps of one hand push ups at one go, the guy with breathings so heavy that it was no longer warm.
I remembered something that the doctors call heart's ejection fraction, which is the measure of the strength of the heart. I remembered that the number he gave me on this medicals was close to the passing marks for the Board exams is not good enough to have. My maternal uncle, who is a cardiac specialist, did tell me that such passing marks call for serious consideration and I did give it it fond discount given the closeness of relation I had with him. But then looking at the google results, I could understand that my optimism of non-happening of a catastrophe is well, just that, optimism. The reality of life is that as I go through every day, working and living as if nothing is wrong, given the precarious number which hangs like Damocles sword over my head, it is sheer luck which ensures that I am every day at the doorstep to ring that bell and watch the hopping dance of my little one. It is this kind of optimism which is a killer, and it is this kind of optimism which needs to be fought against and won against. The comfort cocoon of false well being which I have built around me, because the idea is to escape the hardship which reality imposes on me, is what is to be broken. I need to break it for one reason, if not for anything else is to keep on having the possibility of those clear, naughty eyes looking at me, which I could still look back and latch on to them. No things are not fine, that is false optimism, things are pretty awful and need pretty stiff steps to be taken, that is realism. The Sun must pull all its strength and throw its light across the cloud which stands in between.
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