Thursday, December 02, 2004

Journey

My new silver Honda accord LX 2003 is the third car I have owned in less then 15 months, the first one being, Honda accord 99, I had a accident just 15 days after I got it, the 2nd car was Toyota Camry 94, which remained my companion for a year and then died, mission accomplished, Now I have my third companion with me, she is cool and fast

I like to go on long drives with it, just the 2 of us, me and my Honda, we go places we haven’t been before, sometimes we go to the same routes again and again, some times entirely new places. When we are lost, we are still together, so there is no fear of being left alone. It’s always a wonderful adventure driving together.

On the highways there are speed limits, how fast we can drive, but who cares, no matter how fast you are, someone is going to over take you any ways. Most of the time when I drive at 55, the speed limit of Houston highway 59, I feel like driving the slowest car on the highway. Its amazing to see how many vehicles there are on the highway at the same time, different makes, models and colors, all with different originations and destinations but they are all there on the same road at the same time. Every minute few cars are coming up on the highway and at the same time few are taking the exits, towards their destination.

Shakespeare said life is a stage and we all are performers, well for me life is a highway and we all are drivers, any given day so many of us are born and so many take the death exit but any given time so many of us are there with different backgrounds, different races, different colors & shapes each having unique identification (names), speak different languages like all those different model cars with different makes, sizes and colors, we all come and go. But life continues, the highway continues. The journey goes on.

Each car has a different destination; each driver has a different mission, a totally different reason then all the other drivers. And the mission is what decides the route and the map on how to reach that particular destination, then availability of time decides how fast or slow one is going to drive. Each one of us is different with a unique destination, unique goals, strengths and weakness, we all get unique set of opportunities and threats throughout our lives yet we still are together.

A white infinity G35 passed by, the best car of the year, not that expensive, but the best in performance against value. I started noting different makes and models; I could see Lexus, Ford, Toyota, Honda, GM. BMW, VW, Chrysler and the big one H2. They are all so different; each having an entirely different set of features but all performed the same job, transportation, taking us from one place to another. Hmmm, then why on earth each car has a different price tag, some are so much affordable then others. Why? May be because they provide us comfort and luxury during our journey, some are more safer to drive while others are more fun to drive, the set of value in each car determines the price tag the consumer is going to pay on a particular make and model.

Now I am stuck between 2 poles, which one is more important, Journey or destination? If journey were not important why would we all be paying so much more for so much luxury while we can get to the same place cheaper? Why should one fly with continental when he or she can get to the same place via southwest in fraction of the cost? The journey must be important, yeah it must be. But what about destination, isn’t it the destination, for which we take all the pains, the reason we buy these cars or airline tickets, isn’t destination more important…

We all were born, we entered the highway of life, we all have certain goals and destinations in mind and yeah ultimately we all will take the exit of death one day, do we know our destinations, where we are heading towards, where exactly we want to go, what exactly we want to achieve, how can we reach a place if we don’t even know where are we going to and where we want to reach. Unfortunately, that’s the case with many of us, we just live by the road philosophy, we will go wherever it takes us, but the dead ends and road divides create troubles. Sometimes we don’t even know what speed we should go with since we ourselves don’t know how far we have to go, isn’t that awkward.

Other are the times when we know where we are heading and reaching there is the only thing we are concerned about, we zoom with speed but in the process miss all the beauty and adventure during the journey, we fail to notice the pleasure the journey itself has to offer.

Are we driving well and safely, how would we know we have accomplished what we destined to is by reaching that destination but in our lives the prominent question remains

How do you know whether
Your mission on earth is over…

If you are alive…it isn’t.


(Richard Bach)


Are we sure what mission we are on?

3 comments:

Raheel Lakhani said...

journey makes the destination. destination keeps changing but again price tag of every destination is not the same. we have different goals, some more important, some have less significance. all these different destinations take us to the journey of the ultimate destination.

Raheel Lakhani said...

the best thing of your works are the examples.

Harshadanand said...

All your posts manifest Advaita philosophy. You make it so simple with mundane examples to understand the true meanning of life and its mission. What strikes me most from all your posts that I have read and re-read that the message of Homogeneity of Human beings is presented loud and clear. If we all tear off the false masks of caste, creed, religion and nationality and become just plain Human Beings then and only then we will have True Peace and Harmony on earth.