“What would you ask from God, if you ever met him?”, wondered my mum with a counter question to mine.
I was about 9 -10 years old. We were returning home from listening to one of the scripture stories at a Hindu study centre (in our village in India), where a demon king did a lot of meditation and prayers to please God and asked him for immortality, so he could rule the world forever. Continue reading “Return To God”
When I was a child my parents had a beach house in a quiet area outside the city. My sisters and I used to complain about having to spend our holidays and most weekends away from our friends. Though we would occasionally bring friends to stay, it was like we were missing out on growing up in a society with all its enticements – shopping centre hangouts and the like. There was also another part of me that was relieved that I had the space to be in wonder with the world a little longer than many of my peers.
My sisters and I used to sleep in the backyard under the stars in summer. I would wake up halfway through the night and lay there in awe – magnetised to a sky filled with billions of stars. It was so dark, we could see everything – so many stars that to this day I’ve not found a place quite the same. I remember shooting stars every second and feeling like the sky was so close, as if it was moving closer towards me the longer I looked at it – now I understand this to mean that the seemingly close proximity was a reflection of feeling the universe inside me. I’d lay there for hours just staring at the grandness and majesty of it all. It was like my eyes got wider and my heart expanded up and out to meet it all. Pure connection with a divine aspect of me that is still palpable as I write about it. Nonetheless, it was a connection I decided to completely sully on the basis that no one and nothing was meeting me with the same grandness and majesty that the stars did. Continue reading “Returning to Wonderment – A Practical Return”
Recently a friend used a figure of speech while describing a situation involving an unexpected detail that later turned out to be crucial to the success of their project, but after going unnoticed, caused further disruption and complications to occur. It made me contemplate the meaning and foundation of this now commonly known idiom.
Many people may be familiar with the phrase ‘the Devil’s in the details’, which some claim was originally used by the atheist German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (in German: “Der Teufel steckt im Detail”(1)) and later adopted by many other cultures around the world, although paradoxically the exact ‘details’ of its origin seem difficult to determine. It generally “refers to problems or difficulties that result from the unforeseen nature of unexamined details. It refers to a catch hidden in the details rather than the truth in its abstract sense.”(2) This was indeed the saying used by my friend during our discussion, but after having a feeling that something did not seem right about that phrase (probably stemming from the fact that I personally have never believed in the existence of the ‘Devil’), I decided to do a little digging into the true foundation of this phrase. Continue reading “The Angel’s In The Details”
In light of the recent fire that devastated the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris on April 15, 2019, there were many things that occurred in response to this event that felt very disturbing to me and highlight both the current and historical hypocrisies that exist in our business and geopolitical landscapes.
Soon after the blaze was extinguished and the damage was assessed, there was a groundswell of support to fund the rebuilding of the structure after the French president Emmanuel Macron promised to rebuild the structure within the next five years. Continue reading “The Burning of the Notre Dame – Disaster or Messenger of Truth?”
Have you ever been in a situation, like being in an elevator with someone you don’t know, of feeling the awkwardness as you both are looking forward at the door as if the other person isn’t there: you suddenly break the silence with the profound observation of… “Nice weather we’re having lately, huh?” to which they reply “Yeah, it sure has been.” Continue reading “How Small is Small Talk?”
My guess is that it’s fairly common for women to have a ‘shoebox’ or something similar in which they store their ‘treasures.’ Letters, cards, photos, locks of their baby’s hair, basically things of sentimental value that seem to confirm their sense of identity, things that are pertinent to them and their lives. Continue reading “The Shoebox “