Achievement vs Success (part I)

According to the wise words of one of my old teachers, "if your last achievement is more than five years old it is as good as obsolete, time to work on something new".
Makes sense to me.
What most people don’t realize is that achievement like any other thing has a life span which is usually not that long. Very few accomplishments have such a massive impact that their significance and magnitude transcends generations. As for the rest it is like a flower in bloom, amazing while it lasts but not worth much once it has wilted. So it is probably not a good idea for people to brag about some amazing feat they accomplished 25 or so years ago. Not only does it sound immodest, it also draws attention to the fact that they have accomplished nothing worth mentioning since then.
For those who have that ever pinching ambitious streak in them, they should know that one’s life should not revolve around one event, one goal or one accomplishment. It should be a constant struggle to excel, a desire to move beyond the point they have previously reached.
To continue to strive for better and beyond is true achievement.

Reading woes

I have finally learned to emotionally detach myself from a book. The decision came after having read a particularly unpleasant and depressing book. The most annoying fact was that there was no need for it to be that gloomy at all. I guess the author had some notion that dismal writings are a fad and thus turned a reasonably pleasant enough book into a forcibly dismal fiasco: an act that not only left me depressed but irritated as well. So I became weary of all books based on futuristic dysfunctional societies and made it a point not to form any kind of emotional attachment to them. Result is that I no longer get depressed.

But on the other hand the fun from book reading has departed. All my life I have lived amongst the characters on the pages of the book, felt what they felt, thought what they thought and did as they did. I have always been a part of the book, never someone viewing the events from outside as they unfold on the pages. Now with my new reading formula in place, a book is nothing more than words written on a two dimensional piece of paper. Leads me to wonder, am I doing the right thing?

I have been to Bukhara and Samarkand without having set foot in those places. I have lived though medieval Europe despite having been born several hundred years too late. Some books have grown closer to my heart than my most prized possessions. Can I live with never feeling like that for any piece of written work again? The way I see it, if you can’t feel it, you can’t love it and if you don’t love it you can never cherish it.
Can I risk never being able to cherish another book?

There is no end to the wonders of a good book. And yet, the damage done by a bad one is just as devastating. It is like biting into a bad almond. Everything you taste afterwards tastes bitter. So am I to give up all my moments of magical brilliance just so that I can save myself from suffering the emotional torture induced by below average writings.
Alas! that is the question to which I have not yet found an answer.

"Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0"

The colour of the sky today took me years back, to a monastery on a small hill on the western coast of France called Mont Saint Michel.
It is amazing how something as insignificant as a flicker of colour or the brief whiff of some fragrance can trigger such strong memories.

Election 2013

My son went out to cast his vote for the first time this morning.
As he was walking back towards his car a guy stopped him and asked him who he had voted for. And my son answered.
For “PAKISTAN.”
Bravo!
He is only Nineteen years old and yet he understands the basic concept of election that has escaped many senior Pakistanis.
11 May is neither about victory of any political party nor about one’s political affiliations. The choice has always been and always should be PAKISTAN.
That is why I love the youth of today. They have no confusions about what should be at the top of their list of priorities.

I have finally unraveled the mystery of my weekend headaches.
I have been subject to those headaches for quite a while now but could never understand why they occurred punctually over the weekends.
It came down to the most important question in the end:
What makes my weekend different from every other day? Or to be more precise, what do I do on the weekends that I normally don’t do on the weekdays to trigger these headaches.
The answer was simple; I usually sleep in on weekends.
Weekday mornings are like whirlwind: me getting ready for work, rushing after the kids, urging them to hurry. Sometimes the morning goes by so fast that it is no more than a blur in my memory.
But weekends are different.
I relax on weekends.
It is one of the things that I enjoy, knowing that I don’t have to rush to be anywhere so I sleep in. But as a result I end up with a throbbing that lasts half to full day.
So the solution is that if I want a painless weekend, I have to treat it exactly the same as all other days and be a good little early bird.
Sometimes I just love God’s sense of humour, for making the cure even more distasteful than the ailment.

I do SO miss wasting my time, now that I have no time to waste.

Roman Holiday

"Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0"

For some reason I have been missing Rome a lot lately.
I suppose it might be because Rome provided me with one of those moments that simply take your breath away.
I am not easily awed by the things that I see. The tragedy of living in today’s world is that nothing surprises us anymore. We are a generation that has grown up believing that anything and everything is possible. Sometimes I miss the element of surprise and disbelief our forefathers experienced when some thing extraordinary was introduced to them.
So under the circumstances when some thing spectacular comes along, I for one cherish it. Coming back to Rome; my captivating moment came as I stood at the center of St. Peter's square in the middle of the night.
There can be no describing the feelings that I experienced standing in the heart of that magnificent centuries old square. There was complete silence and emptiness all around us, both things, a rarity in today’s world. I don’t know how long I remained there but every second of it was mesmerizing.
The enchantment did not end there. After leaving St. Peter's my husband and I wandered around for a while drinking in the beauty of the grand Roman architecture spread all around us before finally sitting down on some stairs near Castle de Angelo. In front of the steps a group of performers were practicing some traditional form of dance (the kind in which the dancers all moved around in a circle). There were a few people already seated there watching the performance so we sat and watched with them. Suddenly it did not matter anymore that it was close to one in the morning. It did not even matter that we had had a looooong (why so long? That is an even longer story) and tiring day. Infect sleep was the last thing on our minds.
Why should we sleep when we can sit on ancient Roman steps and watch people dancing in front of us?
As bizarre as the above question may sound now, somehow at that time, it made perfect sense.
There was music, there was dancing, there was joy: it was the perfect Roman holiday.
Since our hotel (hotel sole) was at walking distance from the Vatican City, we went back there again in the morning. St. Peter's square was still there but the magic was gone. It was now full of tourists, cameras and even occasional cars that sped right through the square as if it was some common road (I had not expected that). In the morning it was just a tourist site like thousand others scattered all over the world.
But even thought the enchantment of the night had disappeared in the light of the day, the beautiful memory of it, thank God, will always remain.