The Other Side

While I stand in front of the refrigerator, the first thing I look at is the door. There are so many different kinds of magnets on it, so many different kinds of bills and reminders in front of my eyes; there is so much to look. At this very moment, I am not concerned about what is happening to the rest of the world, the refrigerator door is it self a whole world engulfing my thoughts. Looking at those different magnets and all those things beneath them, these are all I m concerned with right now…thinking about all those bills to pay and reminders about numerous different things, the shopping list, the birthday party of neighbors son, and what not. The reality of my world has changed, Now, these magnets are the center of my thoughts and I am out of the world I was in, a few moments back, and now into reminders, bills and of course magnets.

The phone rings and I move out to receive the call, it’s from a friend who lives in New York, her mother died in a car accident, I forget about all the bills and reminders, in one moment the face of reality changes again, now I am grieved and my thoughts are focused on how to console my friend, the feelings surrounding me are of concern, fear & sympathy. My mind slowly drifts towards life after death, and I start thinking, “Have I done enough to survive?” If there is any thing after death, the religions teach but you never know, its always the question of belief, any ways, I sit on the sofa, open the TV and there is Breaking news of blast somewhere, suicide attack, killing so many innocent people, terrorist or freedom fighters? Who are they? A very thin line depending on the paradigm one is looking at it from.

Suddenly, I realize that few minutes back, the magnets that were important to me are no more present in my thoughts and the reason my mind finds acceptable is because they are no longer in front of me, they are no more part of my reality…. my friends who were so important to me in early parts of my life, are in some other parts of the world right now, since they are not part of my active reality, I have forgotten about them, yeah the ones I used to do my home work with, the ones with whom I used to play, hang out, they are no more important….at least right now.

When I get back in front of the refrigerator door, those magnets again become important, the class reunion again rejuvenates the old memories, and we start from where we left, our lives have been fine tuned that way, what is in front of us is most important, rest of the matters, we keep them aside but never get time to get back to them. When we accidentally or in some other way come across them again, at that time we realize what we missed, like getting back to the refrigerator reminded me that I missed paying my electricity bill and the due date is gone. Ooooooops!

The point is how fast we change our priorities, or are they our real priorities. Are we able to separate urgent from important as Stephen covey preaches or are urgent things taking over the important things in our life OR the urgent things are getting disguised as important leaving the actual important things no attention at all, putting them back beneath the magnets on the refrigerator door.

But that’s just the outside world of the refrigerator; there is a whole new world inside as well. This new world is not open to every one, but only visible to those who take the pains to open the door. But again, not every one is interested in viewing the complete contents inside. Most of us are interested in only what we are looking for, once we find the bear or soda or whatever we are looking for, rest of it becomes irrelevant again. There are very few of us, who are not sure what we are looking for and see through a little more. Rare are the cases where someone reaches out and looks through every thing inside.

We meet so many people every day, Alvin Toffler says we meet more people in a single day then a village farmer used to meet in his life time hundreds of years back, the turbo speed of life and the ease of travel and communications have removed the “im” from the impossible. Of all the people we meet every day, how many doors we open to see what’s inside the person, what actually makes that person, or the outer beauty and looks are enough for us to judge any one. Are we afraid of opening the doors or are we not interested or is it that we don’t care. Whatever the reason be, we actually open very few doors. The ones we open, how much we can claim we know about that person, be it any one, sister, brother, best friend, boss, class fellow, teacher, peon, driver, cook or in fact life partner. With how much certainty can we claim that we completely know this person………more often then not, we just see inside to check does that person has what we are looking for, if yes, good, if no, good bye. Selfish us. I know its really cold standing in front of the open refrigerator door sometimes, looking for what’s all inside but again, there is a price for everything. Are we willing to pay the price?

It’s all about opening the door, if we look carefully, we would surely find so many things inside the refrigerator that would surprise us, some things we were not expecting to be there. These surprises are pleasant as well as non-pleasant ones, but fact of the matter is that surprises open yet another view of possibility in our mind which was not present there before. “Oh wow! Cadburys, I just love them, who bought it, I didn’t know they were here” or “I didn’t know you are so caring, they way you helped me out of this mess, I am so thankful, I am glad I asked you for help” its all the question of opening the door. Sometimes doors are open accidentally or without effort on our part and it makes us go and see what’s more is in there, just out of curiosity. Other times, when we are with someone, talk and care, we actually open that door ourselves, some times the other person leaves the door open for us to see…as they say more you know about someone more you can come close and care, the question still remains the same, Are we willing to open the door?

Stephen covey talks about emotional bank account, that we all carry a emotional bank account with each person we meet and have our relationship with, some times when we do some thing good, we deposit in that account and other times we do some thing bad or say some thing bad, we make a width drawl from it, and the next time we meet we start with the balance we left last time. Refrigerator is a way to keep things fresh even after days, and when we take it out, some things we have chilled and cold, rest we heat up a little in the micro and have it as we put it in there, the emotional account way, nothing changes, we restart where we left from, time sometimes matter but most of the time it doesn’t. Relationships have a unique bonding, that stays even when souls are miles apart, and re grows when the boundaries are abandoned. What ever we leave in the other persons heart and mind stays there, good or bad, doesn’t matter, experts call it subconscious, and when we meet again, FRESH, those memories re-live again and we start from where we left, what kind of memories we leave with the ones we meet…or better way to ask this questions would be “What kind of memories we want to have we MEET AGAIN? What we need to do today in order to have those memories tomorrow, are we willing to do it…there is no such thing as free lunch!

Right now I am sitting in front of the computer, typing all this in the word processor, I m no where near the refrigerator, this quote appears in one of my email messages sent by an unknown sender completely summarizes how I feel right now

“Words are unable to contain feelings and emotions

&

Thoughts are unable to ignore it.”

There is so much more to say…