Goof-up, Mess-up, Sometimes.
This spherical wonder called Earth is slightly lopsided. Its magnetic core is a little wonky, yet it has worked perfectly since millions of years, supporting the incredible complexities of Life within its leafy embrace. Just like Mother Earth, be gloriously askew — just a little off balance. Because perfection breeds predictability. And worse, it is the weapon of the smug, the complacent. And where there is complacency and a self-perception of perfection, the doors to learning and experimentation slam shut forever. There is nothing left to learn — or to do differently. There is nothing to get better at anymore. Have you met those people who build their ‘kingdoms of power’ at the workplace? And those who are the tyrants of their families at home? The people who when they approach, make their co-workers duck in vain under their desks to avoid them? And whose children scurry to their rooms when the dreaded doorbell rings? Those people who are terminal eclipses to interesting conversations, sucking away sunbeams with the straws of negativity — and at the arrival of whom, others sidle surreptitiously towards the nearest exit?
Be the person who can wear a pink sock and a green sock all at the same time in their hurry to go out and greet Life. Be the one whom people trust enough to bring their troubles to, with whom they can be assured of a dependable and non-judgmental shoulder to lean on. Be the person who can heed the ‘humblest’ intern and bend down and listen to the smallest child — because it is from the unlikeliest directions that the breeze of revolutionary ideas blows.
Thomas Alva Edison — the ‘Wizard of Menlo Park’ — never thought himself to be perfect. If he did, he would have smugly sat on the haunches of his 1 percent inspiration, never attempting the 99 percent perspiration leading to radical inventions such as the motion picture camera and the light bulb that contributed quantum leaps to the quality of human life.
A Renaissance genius like Leonardo Da Vinci constantly competed against himself, revving up the engines of excellence with masterstrokes of creativity and scientific works as a painter, sculptor, mathematician, architect, musician, engineer, inventor, cartographer, anatomist, botanist and writer. If he ever thought ‘perfect, I have painted the Mona Lisa’ — that is all we might have know him for. And sometimes — the biggest blunders can transform into wonders. John and Will Kellogg accidentally left a pot of boiled grain on the stove for several days and the result was a thick and crunchy mixture that evolved into breakfast cereal. While looking for a wonder drug, Sir Alexander Fleming messed up by allowing a contaminated petri dish to grow moldy and penicillin, that powerful antibiotic was born. Granted, all goof-ups will not lead to flashes of brilliance, but at least the potential is rampant.
Strive a little towards imperfection. I for one am very good at messing up. I commit mistakes so that I develop the experience and maturity to correct them and so that I do not judge others from my self-constructed pedestal of perfection. I seek the imperfect, so that I can live a little imperfectly and love imperfect people— so that I take nothing at face value and find out every Truth for myself. I plan never to be perfect at anything, so that I can hold myself up to my own standards and not worry about measuring up to those that have been set up for me. I plan to embrace imperfection wholeheartedly, so that I am learning new things up to the last moment of my life, seeking the unpredictable, being the tiniest bit uncomfortable — because there is no worse legacy to leave this world with — than being called ‘a perfect bore.’
Vyoma Nupur
Life Is A Symphony of Silence
The hustle and bustle we surround ourselves with, are illusionary attempts to draw our attention away from the depth of life. Everything of importance is in essence, a silent melody — only experienced, not heard. Growth is silent. Seeds planted push out of the earth as silent shoots, growing into magnificent, leafy canopies. Flowers open stealthily. Evolution is silent. Deeper the lake, the more quiet it is. Ripples of tranquility anoint a watery carpet moving silently in the night. Similar to oceanic depths. A meditative mind is a calm and serene oasis.
The best ideas tiptoe to the forefront in times of silence, when the receding tide of turbulent thoughts allow them to materialize into coherence. In this world of relentless noise, silence is a precious commodity, seldom found. All conflicts and struggles of humankind that result from over-communication and ego-fueled arguments may be resolved to a large extent by harnessing the power of the unsaid. If people adopt silence, conversations that they might come to regret life-long may not happen at all. And since the balm of quiet calms the mind, it would allow actions to be taken with deliberation instead of in the heat of the moment, driven only by untrammeled emotion. Though considered unnatural in our daily lives, silence is a state of equilibrium that should be adopted more so that the overheated, combative whine of busy minds can be replaced with cool contemplation.
Silence sings its own distinct song,
evident in the undercurrents of Life, in the subtle movement of planets, in the thrum of the universe. Our own Earth revolves to this symphony. But the unfathomable depth of the music of silence is only apparent to the quiet intellect— an unmoving abyss undisturbed and free of thought. Only such a mind can comprehend the sounds of silence that reverberate in the universal void and in all its creations, from the tiniest pebble to the largest star system. Life itself is a vast and silent movie reel playing in slow motion, frame by frame, recording the story of humanity over millennia, for future civilizations. People will come and go, things will continue to change and evolve, like bold brush strokes on the masterpiece of life, but the silence that runs through the Cosmos, will remain eternal, a golden thread weaving through time and space.
Vyoma Nupur
