ABCD...
Thought I would utilize the term ABCD for this blog. The term itself is an acronym – ‘ABCD’ standing for American Born Confused Desi!
Anyway this is not so much about that. It is probably that all of us have our fair share of confused identities.
We grow up and are taught a certain code of conduct.
Always a “don’t do that!” or “what have I told you about … “ or “now, now Johnny is that how you should behave?”
It changes in school where the teacher and the system as such impose another set of values. A round of “so what did we learn today class?” and so on. A kid then enters the teens not really quite sure of a lot of things and then there are mentors, peers, stars or some other random figure-head that becomes the fount of knowledge. The mount of light!
Then life in college and perhaps extended into the early professional life where we pick up the nitty-gritty of the world to come. Where insights about the bleak dog-eat-dog ‘real’ world are revealed to us; at times these come gradually, accompanied by a slow pain of realization of a bitter truth and at times like someone crashing through the door.
With respect to our perceptions, attitudes and world view, there can perhaps be no definitive right or wrong. No one can tell for there are always two sides to a coin, but when you already made your call and stare at it, as face probably looks back at you from the ground you can’t really see the other side… even though we know what it looks like – we can’t possibly see it. So also it is in life. Oftener than not.
And so we go on at times trudging wearily and at times sprinting through life. Some times on the highway to heaven spurred on the expressway of life by some strange force as happy as cherubs and filled with exhilaration fuelled by an elixir which seems to be life itself. And at other times a gloom descends and a heavy weight weighs down our hearts and the spirit is unable or unwilling to shake of the yoke, a burden that cannot be elucidated. This encumbrance is life too, is it not?
And who knows what it is like when the end comes? Or what the end is like?
Anyway this is not so much about that. It is probably that all of us have our fair share of confused identities.
We grow up and are taught a certain code of conduct.
Always a “don’t do that!” or “what have I told you about … “ or “now, now Johnny is that how you should behave?”
It changes in school where the teacher and the system as such impose another set of values. A round of “so what did we learn today class?” and so on. A kid then enters the teens not really quite sure of a lot of things and then there are mentors, peers, stars or some other random figure-head that becomes the fount of knowledge. The mount of light!
Then life in college and perhaps extended into the early professional life where we pick up the nitty-gritty of the world to come. Where insights about the bleak dog-eat-dog ‘real’ world are revealed to us; at times these come gradually, accompanied by a slow pain of realization of a bitter truth and at times like someone crashing through the door.
With respect to our perceptions, attitudes and world view, there can perhaps be no definitive right or wrong. No one can tell for there are always two sides to a coin, but when you already made your call and stare at it, as face probably looks back at you from the ground you can’t really see the other side… even though we know what it looks like – we can’t possibly see it. So also it is in life. Oftener than not.
And so we go on at times trudging wearily and at times sprinting through life. Some times on the highway to heaven spurred on the expressway of life by some strange force as happy as cherubs and filled with exhilaration fuelled by an elixir which seems to be life itself. And at other times a gloom descends and a heavy weight weighs down our hearts and the spirit is unable or unwilling to shake of the yoke, a burden that cannot be elucidated. This encumbrance is life too, is it not?
And who knows what it is like when the end comes? Or what the end is like?
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