The Stages of Life

A humble attempt at various stages of life the way I see it.

THE BEGINNING
Each of us are born from our mother’s womb (or a test tube) as a free being. The only thing we probably knew was eat, sleep, excrete. We didn’t even have the need to think about anything because what do you need to think when you are being taken care of by your parents! But as we grow, we begin to learn from our surroundings. So a person born in a small village in India is only exposed to the teachings he can receive from there. In other words we begin to see the world around us as whatever there is. This also holds true for religion. We are all born into a religion to which the parents belong. If the parents are atheists, we are born atheists too. But the point is, when we are born we learn to see what we perceive from our nearby external world as the truth. This is our beginning stage, the stage where we narrow ourselves, where our exposure is limited and our idea of the world is confined to our location. This is a stage till we go to a school.

THE SCHOOL
As we grow, we know more. School teaches us history of the whole wide world in its own prejudiced way. I mean, we believe what is written in a text book to be the truth and hope that what is written there will guide us in our lives. We are exposed to science. We are taught how to communicate. Basically, we learn from the books, through the interpretation of the teacher. Our understanding now becomes wider. But then, for the most part, the education that we take is understood more from a career perspective. A Long preparatory effort of money making in your later life. A few of us learn it for the sake of learning, for the mere joy of understanding something new and expanding our knowing. A rare few of us can see beyond school and learning and find their own path, but in general we end up preparing for the big money making days, whatever way it may be. Art, Music or Literature doesn’t matter, only that which can help you earn money is learnt. After all, money is needed for our survival, so we ourselves do feel the necessity. Whatever opinion on religion we had will most likely continue the same during this stage.

THE RAT RACE
We land a job or some of us hopefully will land a job after we graduate. We work tirelessly for a big name corporation to earn our living. We sacrifice everything for the sake of earning money. We put up with the boss, we put up with the traffic, we put up with life in general and focus our whole energy in money making. This can be endless and varies from person to person. The desire never ends and as years pass by we continue to live a meaningless life of making money. Not that it is wrong, It is just that we don’t get a sense of fulfillment, a perception merely. Also, there is a retirement life that needs to be taken care of and all the talks about preparing for the future keeps you very busy.

THE TRANSITION
During this stage, We tend to know more now, because we read the news and blogs on the internet, it makes us more knowledgeable of the things that go on around the world. We begin to have our own opinions. We can talk about various topics for hours with our friends during that Saturday night party and really go on till we can prove that we are more knowledgeable than others. Our ego builds up and it may make us question the need for a religion or a God. The Atheist mind now comes into picture. We feel the need to go beyond our tradition. This is not bad and may not be good either. Because, the questioning Atheist minds is actually the first step to the Truth, but if you let the ego breed into Atheism, it might mislead you. Some of us, eventually get tired of taking a side and fighting for one way or other and progress to a stage of Agnosticism. But again any judgment of any transition happening to an individual is wrong, so don’t be worried about whatever you are right now, whatever is happening right now is the truth. Whatever situation you are in right now is the reality, worrying about the past or wondering about the future wont help at this point.

But life can test you. Life gives you jolt sometimes. Life wants you to understand life and not just go on in the closed confined beliefs that you carry, whatever it might be. Your whole understanding of life will be questioned by life itself. This is the point where you are given a chance to get out of the Rat Race, to break free of all prejudices. You are merely given a chance to understand things better. But we want logic don’t we. We want explanations for everything. Sorry, but the jolt that life gives to you will have no logic. It will just happen for no reason. It will challenge you to enter the world of questioning yourself, questioning your understanding of everything.

There is only 2 possibilities from here:

1. You can choose to ignore, offer whatever resistance you can and get back into the Rat Race after facing several hardships and then continue blaming Yourself, Society, Government or God.

2. You can begin the process of questioning. You can step into a whole new world and a new way of understanding. A new life will begin. You will be in the Rat Race, but the Rat Race won’t pull you with that force any more. You will start going at your own pace. That own pace might be faster than the Rat Race Pace or slower. But the difference is, in the former you are being pulled and in the latter you are in control and you choose your speed. It will be like every one is begin pulled at 50 miles per hour around the track in their lanes and you would be flowing consciously at a varied speed, walking freely at the pace comfortable to you, in your own lane. You will begin to break free.

THE SEEKER
If you chose the blue pill, the point number 2. Welcome to the world of seeking, where you seek only the absolute truth. If you took this step, don’t worry because there are always fellow seekers who guide the other seekers in your path. Your real journey begins now, it doesn’t matter where, but it will happen only in the now. Only “Now” will be important. Whatever your mind so far has thought about Religions, Atheism, Agnosticism, Some cult are only stepping stones. They were just connecting stations before your long journey of seeking. Your Journey begins not in the future nor did you miss it in the past, but it is in the changing now. It is now and never ever. It is very important to understand what is “Now”. What is Now? We will see…

The Rise of Slackers

Michael Moore has released his latest documentary “Slackers Uprising” at the right time with US Elections just a few weeks away. You can download the movie legally for free, just follow the link provided by Patrix.

The term Slackers in this movie refers to College Students (So not people like me), who would prefer to be Lazy and Party around (Sounds like me) instead of registering and voting in Elections (Shit! Sounds exactly like me!). I have many reasons myself for not voting in India:

- I wan’t in a single place long enough to catch an election.

- I did have a chance once, I went to the election booth with my Voter’s id only to find that they didn’t have my name listed in the Roll. That was it, I traveled away again and I don’t know when I will be able to vote again in Elections.

Ever since I saw Fahrenheit 9/11, I had become a big fan of his work. His documentaries are all about bringing forward truth with facts. When you watch his documentary you can’t help but notice Truth staring at your face. Slackers Uprising is one such effort by Michael Moore.

Picture: http://www.slackeruprising.com

The movie is about his struggle that he went through in the Fall of 2004 before the US Presidential election, to tour colleges in US and make the students to register and vote. With just 5 weeks left to election in 2004, He toured colleges in 60 cities in that short frame of time. It was amazing to see what one man was capable of doing. At some point I felt Moore must be Gandhi of the West. Sure, he isn’t exactly what Gandhi was, but his belief in fighting the Bush Administration with Truth was remarkably similar to what Gandhi did against the British. Throughout the movie, Moore doesn’t dislike the citizens who are Republicans. In fact he goes to the length of welcoming the folks who disrupt his speech and tells them that if Democrats come to power, whatever beneficial things that are going to happen will happen for them too. This is another place where I saw Gandhi in him.

Winston Churchill did say that if Gandhi fought him with Guns and Canons, He would have crushed him with his weapons. But Gandhi fought him with Truth and Churchill said that there is no weapon to kill Truth. Moore’s agenda was simple and clear throughout the movie:

1. To bring out the Truth in front of the people.

2. To show them their responsibility and what it means for the Young to go out and Vote.

To me Michael Moore is a Modern Gandhi and I wish we had more or atleast one in every country.

There are various issues that one has to consider for this election – Economy, Jobs, Healthcare, Illegal Immigrants, Environment, Rising prices of Energy, Foreign policy. These issues will have to be fought and solved even after the elections. But to put the first step in the right direction for all these issues to be solved, it is very important for every American Citizen to go out and vote. This is exactly what the movie portrays.

The movie begins with showing how John Kerry, who was leading in opinion polls, all of a sudden was steered away due to the Republican Campaign. By the time Kerry and Democrats responded much damage had been done. Moore comes to the rescue, by talking to the young voters who haven’t registered to vote and urges them to Vote. The movie is all about that Journey, the difficulties, the opposition from Republicans preventing him to speak and much more. In the end, Kerry doesn’t win. He loses only by a small margin and if Moore hadn’t done what he did, Kerry would have lost with a wider margin

That is the essence of the movie, To show what difference it will make if each and every eligible citizen in a Democracy (not just USA) goes out to Vote for whom he/she believes in. The key word is Democracy and hence this movie can not only be applied to the US Context but also to all the countries which exercise Democracy. This is exactly why I care about the movie even though I am not a US Citizen.

Why should the rest of world care if Slackers in US Vote or not?

1. US is the No. 1 Economy. If something happens to this big economy the ripples are felt through the entire world. There is no doubt about that.

2. As a leader US has the power to set an example either good or bad, because they are looked upon by the world as the leader. The attitude in most cases is “It worked in US, so we do it” or “It failed in US, so let’s not repeat that” with some exceptions.

3. The Govt. that comes to power in US has the say in Foreign policies and that means a lot to other countries that have ties.

I am not a politically savy person and these are just some reasons I can think of as to why People of the world will care about the US Elections. There could also be other reasons like Technology, Education, Science, Medicine, Business etc. If you know of anymore reasons please feel free to share it with me.

Here is a non-U.S Citizen sincerely hoping that good things will happen in this election and People will cast their vote for carefully thought out reasons and not for reasons that sound like “Sarah Palin is Cute”, “Sarah Palin is Hot”, “Dude, did you see her in Bikini?”, “Palin’s glasses are awesome, it’s a rage”, “Palin’s Daughter is way Cuter than Hillary’s”!