Life n Karaoke

And while I sipped my tea today, it suddenly struck me! A parallel for life. Well..I must say, yet another parallel for life. Quoting Shakespeare.. "All world's a stage.." but it could as well be altered to apply to a single lifetime. The people entering your life being actors in the drama, you.. but a mere observer with little control if any, with God (for the believers) as the director. Hmm..that was an interesting thought in itself..but I'm digressing..Maybe another time on this issue.

What the magic of caffeine brought to my mind was..Life really..is very much like Karaoke! You have your lines written down for you, the songs fixed, and only when you sing along with the tune with the right words, does it sound melodious. So now you know what I am going to say next..Aaah...the parallel between who writes the lines, who fits in the tune, is not of interest to me today. The bottomline is..Here we are, stuck with this song...and with these words, and all we can do is to sing!! And when we have the right words, for the right song..there! That makes a pleasant song..a satisfied life. Coz, we really have no other choice but to sing to those tunes that destiny has etched out for us. And maybe the grass always seems to be greener on the other side because each one of us is given this primitive Karaoke machine with a mutually exclusive set of melodies. Thus, making each existence unique. Beautiful in its own way. Some of us are made to win Nobel prizes, some end up never ever applying what they gained either through education or experience and others hang somewhere in between, catching up with life. I agree I'm being very cynical classifying lives in this manner, but being ordinary has its own charm in my view. A more balanced splurge on the being.

Having said that, people like me really wish the Karaoke machine got a little more sophisticated with just more choice!! Yes, its the same frustration I felt when my hub decided to buy me a Karaoke system on the 100th day of our wedding and all I found were these ancient boxes that could only play a given set of songs. But as all other things which I fail to find, I decided.."Maybe I should shop around a little more!" And that is exactly what each one of us does in the process of finding the perfect life..search and dream for tunes that would bring in more spice, more zeal and charm to this merry-go-round, praying for a little more control on our actions, and hoping that one day it will all get better than it is right now!

Permanence

I was speaking with an old friend of mine when I realised how far away we had drifted. We have different lives now, different aspirations, different views. Our priorities had changed, we didnt sync in the way we did once, and all there was, was this conversation. We didn't have those "exactly my thought!!" kinda moments, all we were doing was listening to each other and nodding, sympathizing with each other..then having that uncomfortable silence where someone says.."so what else is going on?" which exactly goes to show how much apart we had become. We then hung up saying we will keep in touch and keep each other posted. A promise that we both knew would never be kept.

That's when I got to thinking...what is permanence really? What in our life is ever-lasting? Our friends, people who we spend a wonderful part of our life with, people who share our deepest pain, people with whom we want to share any good news first..move away, become different people and the only time we feel the faint sense of rememberance is when we speak of our days together. Days when life was simpler. More beautiful and more complete.

So if everything in life is meant to be perishable, has a "sell-by" date attached to it, then why do we even bother investing in these relationships? Why don't we say.."Aaah, I know I won't even bother taking his/her calls at a later point of time.." and forget it? Maybe because when we start out on any relationship, we believe that we are going to give our 100%. Why do we make this silent promise to ourselves? Many reasons - to make up for a past broken relaitonship, to feel good about ourselves, or simply because we feel a conneciton with the person.

So when at a later point in time, we find ourselves "catching" up with this friend's life, we think of the good times, the times where being with that person made us happy and going down that memory lane does nothing but leave a desperate craving to live that exact moment, feel that very emotion yet once again..knowing fully well that that's not gonna happen..we do not get second chances on the tick-tock of life..and then we let out that infamous "sigh"..a realization that no matter what we do, all that is left of this relationship is a broken thread..that it is never going to look the same again smooth and flowing as it used to be...but bumpy and artificially fixed like knots on the thread.

Karma

Blessings...we all have our share of them in different forms - people, good fortune, health, happiness, contentment. All we need is to open our eyes wide enough to recognize blessings in our lives. And there lies the problem. The inablitiy in most of us to really see their presence. We are so blinded by our quest towards life itself that we forget to stop for one second and thank our blessings or even acknowledge them in whatever form they exist in our lives. Isn't that where we get "karma" into existence? We fail to even be grateful for the good things and blame "karma" on the bad things. But isn't failing to acknowledge blessings bad karma itself?

Why is it that we are so attracted towards the bad happening in our lives that we literally don't want to see the good? And if these bad things/events are so bad, isn't it the best to just let go and take a moment and look at the silver lining? Something good always comes out of hurt. If not anything else, a lesson. A lesson that teaches you so many things to tread safe the next time. Isn't that a blessing in itself? And if doing good and reaping good is all a matter of "karma" then isn't the opposite true too? And if each one of us is aware of this, wouldn't it be so much more easy to go about life - Truth, loyalty, promises, beliefs all upheld!