Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Stop and smell the flowers


In the 2004 Olympic Games, I remember vaguely an Australian athlete in an interview summed up his philosophy in life and sports : “Whatever you do, you can always do it faster”.

Do we want to or should we be speeding through the years we are given to spend on this earth? A sped-up life is a half lived life. We hurtle from home to work, through traffic jams, quick meals at McDs, home cooked meals shoved into a microwave, mobiles stalking us at every turn. We schedule and cram full our days to within an inch of our life. Then we fall into bed each night frizzled and harrassed, grabbing a few hours sleep before the rush hour next morning marks the start of the cycle all over again.

Our world has not shrunk yet we keep hearing people say “what a small world”. The world is the same size – it’s just that we speedfreaks hare all over the surface with unseemly haste – missing life as it were, oblivious to subtle details around us. The result is a world that we perceive has been contracted down to a little park size.

So let us slow down the acceleration of life. Let us downshift a high income lifestyle in favour of an existence whose pleasures are simpler. We don’t need to keep up with anyone, anything. We can be just who we are.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Wake up call


Second day of 2013. This morning I stood looking at my face in the mirror, staring at myself in actual amazement. I looked older, my hair looked tired, and the sparkle that once shone in my eyes as a child had faded. There was a seriousness that had taken place. At that moment, a sense of urgency and determination was awakened in me. That face in the mirror was changing right in front of me. I could have told myself it was just a bad hair day, but deep inside I knew that this was a transition I needed to face, literally …. face to face. I smiled at myself with one of those ‘you-dont-look-so-bad” kind of smiles, but that didn’t work. So I tried to make my smile bigger and brighter, but that didn’t help either.

This was my WAKE UP CALL!!!!
- Time to start doing the things I want to do and need to do
- Time to think about making some changes
- Time to get my life going

As you awaken to the changes that are surrounding your life, you must also stop and reminisce about your past. Who you are is an accumulation of everything that you once were, the total sum of each and every thought you have ever had and every single feeling you have ever known. Let your life be an adventure … look for the invisible, listen to the silences, touch your imagination, and make each day something special. Don’t let that Wake Up Call rudely surprise you.

On a lighter side, I just came back from a new year do with some friends.  Well, the look in the mirror wasn’t bad actually.  I was only trying to wake everyone up to that wake up call.