Perspectives, Impacts, Choices and Decisions play a very important
role in all spheres of life whether we are aware of it or consciously willing
to accept it.
Impacts
may influence our perspectives, choices and decisions and similarly our
choices, decisions and perspective do impact and influence many things starting
from our perception to performance. It
is a sort of inevitable logical obverse.
In every
field the story of human evolution is nothing but the history of impacts either
positive or negative made by people who refused to take the beaten track and no
wonder that George Bernard Shaw is reported to have said
"The
reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man adapts the
world to himself. All progress depends upon the unreasonable man”.
That is one
of the reasons why more people prefer reading literature because of its impact
than books on grammar or dictionaries.
Literature is a natural creative splendor which evolves
according to its own dynamics unfettered by limitations of lexicon. Words,
expressions, usage all play their part in that romance.
Each life i.e. my life, your life and the lives of all great
saints are really speaking very insignificant transient events of a few
years-mostly less than 100 in flesh and blood with conscious awareness-
compared to LIFE as a whole which has happened some four million years before
and may continue for another few millions years hence in various forms, shapes
in multiple species expressing its own attributes some of which we have understood,
some we are not even aware of.
In fact the whole of Bhagawad
Gita, one of the reasons why it became more popular among the 28 Gitas, is that
all its 700 stanzas are sand- witched between two words the starting word
'Dharma' and the last
word ‘Mama’.
It must be actually read as
‘Mama Dharma’= my dharma- does not mean either Krishna’s or Arjuna’s Dharma,
rather when everyone reads it becomes ‘his Dhrama’ and all these 700
verses [ subjected to all sorts of excellent, enlightening as well as, often used
as tool to justifying traditional practices, explanations by many] primarily
are about attitudes to be adopted, actions to be executed and reactions to show
at different situations taking into consideration the overall welfare of all
[humanism].
This manual is more about
balancing the intellect and emotions and most importantly through both emotions
and intellect, or to be precise in short it talks about the dynamics of
synthesis of human nature and nature of Truth [ define as you may- it is the inevitable
and intellectual perception and sometimes all logic eluding factor].
Life is all about movements,
actions and reactions which broadly could be defined as i.e. Karma but then the
Laws [Dharma ] of motions [Karma] of life are very important and therefore
prioritized.
Personal grief, sorrows and
miseries are difficult to handle even for some of the most advanced
intellectual giants or highly sane and even balanced souls.
It is easier to sit and
sermonize or pontificate dispassionately as an outsider.
It is difficult to prescribe
rules for any type of crisis in any aspect of life.
However, if the mind, especially,
that of a grown up individual, is equipped with certain qualities; then
encountering the crisis becomes a shade more simple and sane.
However, the balanced mind,
calm soul, caring heart, clever mind will wait and work on multiple options
before resorting to impulsive actions which may more often result in regret.
Life is the sum total of many
choices and decisions we make/take at every moment and the concomitant actions
and reactions based on them.
But, does life or our
cultures or social systems or religions or education systems offer us readymade
templates to make/to take relevant or correct choices and decisions with
multiple options at every moment?
Or even if they
offer and are ready, are we willing or capable of understanding and making use
of those templates?
Why Did
the Chicken Cross the Road –taken from a book- some observations and all you
may add your own personalities and unleash your imagination and write
Plato: For
the greater good.
Karl Marx:
It was a historical inevitability.
Machiavellia:
So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the
daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among
them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a
manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.
Hippocrates:
Because of an excess of black bile and a deficiency of choleric humor.
Jacques
Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act
of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as
the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD,
DAMMIT, DEAD!
Thomas de
Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.
Timothy
Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it
take.
Douglas
Adams: Forty-two.
Nietzsche:
Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
B.F.
Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from
birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross
roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.
Carl Jung:
The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual
chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore
synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
Jean-Paul
Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found
it necessary to cross the road.
Ludwig
Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the
objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into
being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
Albert
Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken
depends upon your frame of reference.
Aristotle:
To actualize its potential.
Buddha: If
you ask this question, you deny your own chicken- nature.
David Hume: Out of custom and habit.
Salvador
Dali: The Fish. Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the
trees.
Emily
Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
Epicurus: For fun.
Ralph
Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
Johann von
Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
Ernest
Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
Werner
Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it
was moving very fast.
Jack
Nicholson: 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason.
Pyrrho the
Skeptic: What road?
The
Sphinx: You tell me.
Henry
David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.
Howard
Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace
the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity
to attempt such a herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien
pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.
Ronald
Reagan: I forget.
Mark
Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated. Zeno of Elea: To
prove it could never reach the other side.
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