Baked Treats

One of the treats baked by Deepa during her Birthday weekend celebrations.
A Swiss roll topped with fresh whipped cream ! Yummy.

ROCK CLIMBING & RAPPELLING

Climbed up a 60-70 ft rocky structure and then rappelled down from there.
[ 10-Jul-2011 ]

 

Deepa's Birthday

She wanted to do something different this year, so we started a day earlier. The morning with an early session of rock climbing and rapelling, followed by a trip to a historical Jain temple about 45 km away. Exciting and good fun !

More Blankets & Less Blankets

This morning's discussion with Deepa centered around this sequence of points.

The proliferation of the so-called "spiritual" writers and proponents of creative visualization are all born in the murky waters of desperate, hopeless and frustrated people looking for answers in their lives. And sometimes just looking for the easy way out.
After doing all their jigs, and if your grand life doesn't "manifest", then you are doing something wrong. Even if you've done everything right, you've still done something wrong. You've not wanted it enough, or you've wanted it too much….

Which isn't to say there aren't any merits of keeping a positive out look in life. But those are limited to just making yourself happy, and sometimes can be tedious as you try doing that in the face of very opposite circumstances.

An emotional / mental  "payoff" exists even for those who choose to think sad, self-defeating thoughts. How else could you explain people who like listening to sad old hindi movie songs ? They just haven't developed a system of a choice. Even if exposed to knowledge that allows them to have a choice it still takes a lot of effort and resistance to change. Which is why it seems very few people are truly able to make lasting change in their lives.

So is the path to being happy reached by setting lower thresholds for pleasure and satisfaction e.g. food shelter clothing etc ? I feel perhaps, yes. This helps us get a better sense of achievement and a sense of arrival and closure to pursuits. If not, life could turn out to be a long never-ending chase of ever changing dreams.

So am I being silly in getting happy with the small things while peers and colleagues are chasing the big ones?! Who knows….. Does it make me happy ? Yes ! Does it make others happy that they do what they do ? I don't know. And I'm beginning to feel I don't care if they do either. Each one needs to do what works for them.

 

The Powder Puff Flower

This amazing flower blossoms with the first showers of the monsoon, stays in bloom for exactly a week after that; and then its gone. Until the next year.