Physics and Mechanics in Daily Life

Stress and Strain... Pressure... Simple concepts of Physics and Mechanics...

But they make such a huge impact on us humans.

Apply pressure beyond a certain limit, and it turns a Human into a mindless desperate animal. Don't believe me? Try to travel in the Local trains of Mumbai during peak hours. Once you get used to it, you don't even notice it in you... But when you are standing on the platform, after having been forced to let go of more than one crowded trains, you are a desperate animal. You are so desperate that you are oblivious to your surroundings. You don't care whether the thing you are trampling below your feet is your fellow passenger's luggage or the fellow passenger himself...

Apply some stress beyond a certain limit, and a perfectly intelligent human turns into a babbling fool. Don't believe me again? Just face the onslaught of the management in your company when they are only interested in finding a scapegoat, and the unfortunate one with the short straw is you...

Finally, I guess, Pressure and Stress are two variables that are "variable" in the true sense. Their values, at any given time, are not always in our hands. But how we are able to cope with them, is what makes us, or breaks us, doesn't it...?

Move on with a smile...

Today, a good friend changed his profile photo..

Initially it showed him grinning from ear to ear... As happy as Garfield who has recently gobbled up a whole dish of lasagna... Your typical :-D grin...

The current pic shows him simply smiling... The plain old :-) smile...

I asked him why he did that... He says, it signifies he is moving on. For moving on is very important in life.. Even if it means stepping backwards instead of moving forwards [ for his smile had downgraded from :-D to :-) ]

Well I agree with him... Moving on is very important... But I don't think he has moved on... Rather I think he has grown up... 
His first grin looked great on him. But it was still too wide, too carefree... Now his smile looks mature... wise, even...

When we are kids, life allows us the leisure to enjoy the widely grinning smile... One can do that without the burden of worries, responsibilities, expectations and the pain of unfulfilled dreams.. We have the fire of our dreams and our hopes burning bright in our mighty little hearts...

But as we grow up, these things tend to unfold in front of us, like peeling off layers of onion... We are no longer carefree. Worries worry us. Responsibilities make us responsible... Expectations expect from us. Pain pains us so... Then it becomes so difficult to wear that careless happy grin.

Yet we smile... Not the wide denture-flashing grin variety... Just a simple curve of the lips... For the dreams may have died and the fires of hope may no longer burn bright. But the embers are still warm in the hearts. And we hold them dear, never letting them extinguish... For without those embers, won't life become as cold as death itself...?

Lab Rat...

Sometimes I feel like the Lab rat...

Running inside the wheel of Life...

Chasing the beautiful cheese that are my Dreams...
Dreams - always there in front of me, but never really mine...
Dreams - those impossible ones I will never achieve, but can't live without...

When  I tire of the dreams, and am about to stop running... 
There are the electric shocks...
The shocks of responsibilities and expectations...
Making me run faster and faster... Against my will, against my desire...

I land up running the wheel...
Expending my energies, while creating power for someone else
Sometimes the someone else is as stranger to me...
as the company I work in...

And yet I keep going... looking wishfully at that sweet dream-cheese in front of my eyes
Knowing I can never have it, yet pursuing it with daily renewed hopes...

For is it not true what someone said "Woh zindagi hi kya... jisme koi naamumkin sapna na ho..."
"Whats the meaning to that life - which does not have an impossible dream?"