You have the power to cure all the world’s diseases but the price for this is that you must kill a single innocent child, could you kill that child?

Thats the question asked by the protagonist during the climax of Swordfish… I have thought about that question many times, asked it to a few ppl too… Frankly, the answer might tell you something about yourself; About if you can in metaphorical terms ‘pull the trigger’ when the time comes… But what is usually ignored is that, this question is not entirely complete…

The amount of information given is very small compared to what is put at stake… One might wonder about what is to happen to the child after being spared or what about the people of the world, will they live forever? But that actually also does not matter… the question is just a test… there is not child in harms way or no cure for all world’s diseases…

But what if you have the choice to choose between an ethical compromise and helping someone?

What if someone approached you to help some deeply in need. Your heart goes out for the person in need but you doubt the authenticity of the person in front of you. Would you extend you hand to help them knowing full well that you might be getting conned or would you walk away knowing somewhere in your heart that you possibly refused to help someone who direly needed your help.

You might consider weighing your options… but what if the decision has to be made at the moment?

Lets raise the stakes…

What if the help is not insignificant for you? What if your help would be a huge boost for the person in need?

Thinking? Lets see how far we can go with this

What if the help is very significant for you? What if your help would could save someone’s life?

—-

I read a short story a long time back, it was about a barber who was visited by the Dictator of the land. He had in his hand the sharp blade and in front of him the throat of a tyrant who had tortured and destroyed his country. Professional ethics dictated that he do his job and not be biased the political situation…

What would you have done?

During the entire time he is shaving the Dictator’s beard, the barber mentally tries to make the decision… In the end, he does his job. The Dictator walks away a clean shaven man…

So did the Barber make the right call?

I believe, the amount of information given is very small compared to what is put at stake…

Typography: IF by Rudyard Kipling from George Horne on Vimeo.

IF…..

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

- Rudyard Kipling

William Shakespeare famously once wrote “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players“… Shakespeare in his time must have also wondered about his purpose of life and during one of his epiphanies must have believed that he was closer to his purpose than ever.

But what if there is no purpose? What if life is what we truly make of it… Then what is the drive for existence? I believe the real drive for existence is the “pursuit of happiness”

When we look at life and look at the thousands of decisions we have made over our lifetime, what becomes clear is that each and every one of those decisions were made with the expectation that, that particular moment would lead to happiness.

Its easy to look at obvious decisions like going to a movie, visiting a place, meeting up with friends, but even painful choices like lying to someone or breaking a insignificant law had in its core an expectation that things would become in some way better for you. It is this pursuit that we make unconsciously, that shapes the life we have and happiness we eventually get…

What is truly amazing is that we hardly ever discuss happiness or look at ways to seek it in its purest form. Most of our lives are spent trying to indirectly find happiness. The thought that I shall do X task and it will lead to Y situation which will make me happy is so deeply embedded in our minds that we hardly ever wonder what it is to be happy.

It was during a reunion with a few of my ex-colleagues a couple of days ago that I realized that happiness involves being truly comfortable in the moment. As I sat and talked the evening away with my old friends I realized that I was very happy with myself and the moment. Despite knowing at the same moment that my team whom i closely followed had fared badly (an event that would almost always have me sporting a frown). I wondered out loud and asked a friend why it wasn’t that sad or disappointing that our team lost that evening. He simply said, “I am just happy I am here, other than that nothing else matters”.

Thats when I realized it, each one of us in this quest of happiness have become wary of what it is that will disappoint us. We try our best to avoid it but along the way we decide to gamble our happiness for an event. We hope that at the end of the event we will become a happier person and decided to throw in our valuable attention as the wager.

Each and every moment of our lives we are gambling our worries and peace of mind, all for that moment of ecstasy that we hope will last forever.

Today I stood in the middle of a field and watched the sunset… my work needed me to be present at the place at that point of time and as I watched the orange ball of fire slowly descend into the horizon, the dark rain bearing clouds moved in to take its place. The temperature dropped suddenly by a few degrees and soon there was a cool breeze blowing, I stood silently and tried my best to experience the moment that surrounded me. In that moment I was truly happy…

There is a school of philosophy that believes that “you get hurt only by the ones you truly love”. In a sense this is the very same concept of investing an expectation and being let down. One approach of happiness would be to give up investing… then you wont be let down by anyone or anything… but that would mean you should never love again.

But there is an alternative way, I have realized that we must choose to always look at the big picture. Search for things that will make you happy no matter what, maybe its reading or writing, maybe its walking in the evenings or talking to someone that inspires you, maybe its listening to your favorite music or running in the morning, maybe its dancing in the privacy of your room or talking to a baby… What ever it is figure out what it is that exhilarates you. Make that list as long and as diverse as possible… Then just make sure that you search of opportunities to do the things on that list.

Its really that simple, life will give you so many opportunities to do the things that truly make you happy. And when you get an opportunity grab it… don’t think twice…

What I have realized from life is that each and every one of us is somehow, for good or worse hardwired to seek happiness in the traditional way. We are always looking at investing our thoughts and attention at something/someone in the hope that it will make us happy, but the fact is there is already so much beauty in the world and yourself to find happiness. Considering every single decision we made was weighed on the scale of happiness, why walk away from a small treasure of happiness?

I read this Calvin & Hobbes comic a couple of days ago and it reminded me of a very popular scene from a very popular movie.

So what is common between the two works of art. Well its just that in the scene from the matrix the message was “spoon” fed to the audience (excuse the pun ). In the comic Bill Watterson points out the funny side of a situation that is extremely common in our lives.

Bill Watterson substitutes life to snow and Calvin represents each one of us, Calvin ponders about fixing one small bit of the world(snow) to make it perfect for himself. The funny part is that most often than not things out of our control are perfect the way they are, if we need something to change the only thing that we have absolute power over is our selves.

In the Matrix as the boy with the spoon explains to Neo:
Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead… only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you’ll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

The snow and the spoon are both static in what they are, changing them to make them different is an assumption that rest of the world is perfect to fit them in… In the broader view of the world, the only thing imperfect in the world at the moment when you aspire to change something, is yourself.

Almost everyone I have ever met has always pondered out loud, “I wish I had that” or “If things were different, I could have done that”. Intrestingly the only people I know that have got/achieved what they wanted were the ones that realized very soon that it was them that had to adapt and change…

As I traveled to pay my respects, all I could think of were different instances of speaking to him and being with him. I recollected the last time I saw him and that instance was the fondest memory I had of him. That was the last conversation I had with him and it is something I have to share with everyone…

The incident happened about a month and half ago, we were leaving my friend Vishal’s birthday party. I was dropping him home and I have the habit of speaking a lot with the person sitting behind me on the bike. That day I asked him a question I had asked a few of my friends “What was the most special moment of your life?” Mehmood thought for a moment and I explained to him that I wanted him to think of all the special moments of his life and pull out one moment he thought that was the most unique, beautiful and for him the most treasured…

He narrated to me this incident from his life:

Many years ago he was in Mumbai and on the day he was walking back home pretty late at night. That night as he walked back, the streets were all empty. The street he was on had only shops and there wasn’t a soul in sight.

Mehmood was a diabetic patient from when he was much younger. He explained to me that when the sugar level in his body goes down, the patient starts to feel giddy and if they dont eat any form of sugar/glucose they can lose consciousness.

As he was walking Mehmood felt a slight giddiness and realized that his blood sugar levels were probably down. He searched his pockets for a chocolate that he usually carried and realized he had none on him. He looked around for a shop so that he could buy a candy but all of them were shut. He moved on hoping that he could make it home or at least find some shop or home to get a little sugar.

He moved on and slowly realized that it was getting worse, he could not walk anymore and sat down next to a tree. All the while the scenario of him fainting there and being discovered early in the morning was playing in his head. He prayed to god to help him from this predicament. He sat there, waiting…

After a while he was on the verge of losing consciousness and he saw a flicker of light from the distance. The light slowly got brighter and he realized that it was a group of men coming his way. As the men approached, Mehmood tried to hold on… Then all of a sudden one of the men grabbed his had and thrust something into his palm. Mehmood opened his palm to discover three huge lumps of Khal-Shakkar(Rock sugar). He could not believe his eyes, the men were returning from Durga puja and had give him prashad from the temple.

He thanked god and ate the sugar. A little while later he felt better and walked back home.

Mehmood told me that this incident had changed his life entirely. He said this was one of the most special moments of his life…

All through his narration his voice had this aura of emotion. This was clearly a very special part of his life…

After narrating the story he asked me why I had asked him the question in the first place. I told him that I felt it was important for people to relive the special moments of their lives and by asking the question I gave them a chance not just to revisit it but also to share it with someone else. I told him that whom ever I asked the question always ended up being more happy in that moment.

By then we had reached his place and he thanked me for dropping him home. I smiled and told him it was my pleasure and I should be thankful for that conversation. He smiled and waved me bye as I continued towards home.

——

My last memory of Mehmood will be him smiling and waving at me… Thank you Mehmood for all the memories and the sweet moments we shared. You are truly an inspiration to everyone of us who knew you. God bless.