Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The four lives...

“There are four lives you lead” my father articulated in his usual gentle tone, we were in middle of a regular Saturday evening telephonic conversation which mapped from his new diabetes record surpassing the earlier 350 mark, my lunch menu to my love life, and to what his students told him in the class and so forth.. The aimless discussion drifted to an unexpected focus as the old man continued “and you must ensure you do justice to these four lives”

“Four Lives?” I was curious for he sounded like Rajnikanth in an intro song

“The social, the official, the family and the personal life” he said,

And then he explained on how all of us tend to skew more towards one and ignore the other three, “There are people who are always family and work, and leave out on friends.. and then there are others”.. I wondered what he was hinting at...

“And if you ask me the personal life is the most important" he concluded, "The life you live for yourself. The world that is you and not shared by anyone. Its your inner code, richness of your thought and integrity, the books you read, the music you listen to. It is your idea of spirituality and religion It’s what keeps you calm amidst the chaos" ...... "Unless you give yourself a liberal allocation to this inner life, you would never respect yourself”

He had made his point. My father never thrust his opinion on me. Sometimes i wish he did.

But then, I knew what I lacked! :-)

7 comments:

Vinay Sekhar said...

Nice one dude!

sree said...

very nice!!

archith said...

if that's your plight, imagine being in a cat's uh paws. wouldnt your mind just explode? ;)

Arun said...

i ban archith from commenting in my blogs untill he writes stuff i understand

Divya said...

So well said Arun, life somehow always seems to be a see saw with us being at the fulcrum. No wonder the balancing act is what it is. Really nice write up Arun. Your blog has a really nice appeal to it.

aargee said...

your dad is so right!

Arun said...

thanks a lot for visiting the blog aargee