I took a vow at the start of initiating this blog that I would be make a habit of write often. As is often the case with me, after the initial spike of excitement in June with my blog entries, I could not keep up with speed. It is often said that you have keep working on some thing at a reasonable level of excellence for at least 21 days for it to become a habit. Having to do with forming a neuron pathway in a part of the brain which drives our habit patterns.
July has been a tough month for quite a lot of reasons. The excitement to the trip to US was building up for sure. So was the tension in the relationships at home and in personal space. I still can't find balance or inner peace to some experiences that life throws at me. For one, I do not know how to maintain equanimity when your parents start conversations which you don't want to have, take space when you desperately need it and push you beyond your threshold. It reached a breaking point on one day when my dad has pushed the limits of advertisement. I accept parents feeling proud about their kids achievement and bragging about it. Of course, who else can claim bragging rights to a soul which you have given birth and nurtured for a good part of two decades. However, I am not sure how to stay balanced when the desperate need to seek public glory and esteem intrudes into my space of wanting to take experiences which nature gives naturally. On another note, I do not know how to reclaim a true feeling in the past and recreate it in the future. I also do not know how to rationalize the fact that it did swing from a crest to a trough. How do you balance the other person's need for a dialogue(which is draining for you) versus your need for silence and space? It is a contradiction which I can't still respond to naturally. Silence has always been my best friend and solution giver to life's deepest problems. Maybe, I should have written more about it. Maybe, I should have meditated more about it in silence. Maybe, I should have been selfless and taken the dialogue forward. These are questions worth wondering.
But more importantly, they keep reminding me that I am human. That I need to evolve a greater deal than I think I have. As I thought of the next two years this is what came to my mind.
1 childhood dream to live, 2 years to dream ahead, 3 continents apart, 4 semesters of higher order stimulus, 5 elements to master and countless ways to be grateful for life! Let me reflect on the details of that thought.
1 childhood dream to live: I always loved to learn as a kid. Any thought of school fills me with nostalgia. It was a dream to go to the best university in the whole world. Where the mind is without fear, Where the head is held high, Where the world is not broken into fragments by narrow domestic walls, Where clear stream of reason cuts through the dreary sand of dead habit,Where the mind is led forward into thee into ever widening thought and action, Into that heaven of Harvard I am fortunate to be living over the next two years.
2 years to dream ahead: "Live the life of a monk".Geet Sethi's provocative thought keeps ringing in my head as I pursue the deepest scientific and spiritual wisdom at Harvard. Not only a chance to deeply dwelve into the Sciences of Mathematics, Economics, Public Administration, Politics, Psychology and Philosophy but also a chance to understand my deepest self. In the process, find my convictions and my next flash light for years ahead. Indian School of Public Affairs still lingers at the back of my mind as I write this.
3 continents apart: Asia, Africa and Europe - Home to nearly 80% of world's population and 95% of world's most needy. My purpose of all my study is to make life meaningful and spiritually fulfilling to them.
4 semesters of higher order stimulus - A chance to step up the ladder of Bloom's cognitive development taxonomy on every topic - Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Critique in the same order.
5 elements to master - You are what you think and eat. I will need to work hard to be a master of my thoughts, therefore destiny and captain of my soul.
To cap off, I am truly grateful in countless ways for this opportunity of life itself and a chance to redeem the purest form of self. Any less effort and any lower goal seems not worth attaining. Like the saying goes, "Ambition is the not the vice of little people". It is time to wear my cloak of humility :-)
