What’s happening? It may be arbitrary to decide on just one thing that is happening today, as so much is constantly going on, but predominantly one thing which connects all of us - the multimedia-the net, tv, films, books and any other form of expression of another, that one can now savour. And also unburden our own thoughts on them. This shared super- mind activity, definitely helps us become more human. If man, in the days gone by, was limited to learning from the happenings of his village, its surrounding towns and bits of what came in through the print, today on a single average day, you can spend a few minutes on any device and learn about at least ten different right and wrong decisions someone has taken.

This daily increase of the database of our collective memory, sometimes influencing our daily decisions, sometimes changing the flow of mind to new ideas, is like a wave that seems to carry us along, albeit with a sense of individuality, to becoming a wholer person. It feels in gaps in our mind, and answers what-if questions. What if, I had done this, instead of that.

This is what is happening. The entire humanity appears to be caught in periodic waves of thought and mostly calming, improving thoughts meant to make it all seem better. So many wonderful ideas and so much more humanity. Suddenly one can see that almost everyone you know is trying hard to make some sense of the chaos that he feels within himself, to control his internal fears and to feel  a sense of the sublime.

When I was younger, I was always glad that I was born in a modern era and not in one where women- kind were a suppressed and oppressed lot. As time passed, I felt these were in many ways tough times to be born in, with so much pressure on the individual to achieve, to leave a mark behind. Two centuries ago, at my age -40 tish, Indians embarked on vanaprastha- while I feel the onset of a mid-life-crisis- wherein no accomplishment has been enough and ‘there is so much more to do’. Today as I open my mind to all the thought waves that pass in a day’s life on the net, newspapers and  on  line readings, I realise I have been chasing all the wrong goals, most of life, except a brief period in childhood when becoming a good person seemed important.

Today, turning the wheels of my life back to those early days of simplicity, I focus on how whatever that is happening, around me, can help me become better, take wiser decisions, healthy attitudes and hope- reviving thoughts on a daily basis. I realise that every time am feeling really good- am actually deluding myself into a temporary state of drug induced joy, albeit the drug itself is just a bunch of self-reinforcing thoughts and each time I feel low, the opposite occurs- a hit of self-deprecating thoughts. Occillating between these two extremes,  not realising that if I went to the one extreme of happiness on this pendulum, I have to swing to the other logical extreme. That  its time to shift the focus from trying to make myself happy to trying to do the right thing, think the right thought, take the right approach..look for what is right. The word ‘right’ here could easily be replaced by truth. But truth as famously said by Jiddu Krishnamurthy is a ‘pathless land’. Which means its a territory-a region and it has many many vistas, each being part of its landscape. One has to keep walking it through looking for what is right.  And this search is certainly helped by knowing as many stories that you can gather.

Whats’s happening is certainly helping me.