The Stranger in the Mirror.....

There is a stranger in the mirror....
I have seen him very regularly.. almost everyday... but still i dont know who he is... I look carefully.... i can recognize the face...
the scars from earlier days...
the memories flash by....
but i still dont know who he is...
or why he is here...
or what his place in the world is....
Is the stranger in the mirror really me?

Today is easter... This was to be like any other easter which i have had... but i guess life has changed .. i have changed... and of course the world has been introduced to wikipedia...

Easter at home was always a time for countless hours in church, followed by good food from mom... Well i guess staying away from home kinda rips u away from those luxuries and makes u ask some fundamental questions.. and my questions went to the person who single handedly changed the way the world looks - Jesus ....

I did a little bit of reading of Jesus on wikipedia... I was not interested in the divine part of it... being a Christian, i have been exposed to it many times.. i wanted to know the historical Jesus... the information which comes with proof and not just hearsay or religious references.

Jesus is the only prophet who has been referred to in all historical scriptures. Christianity calls him the son of God, Islam calls him a learned prophet, there are also references to him in Hindu scripts. All the scriptures talk about different instances in his life... but there are 2 instances which have been confirmed with historical proof.

The first is Jesus' baptism when he was 30 by John the Baptist... It is mentioned that once Jesus was baptised.. the heavens opened up and the holy spirit descended in the form of a dove. However the right translation is that the holy spirit descended on HIM in the form of a dove... I guess this was the symbolism for a divine inspiration which Jesus received during the baptism.

The second instance is the crucification of Jesus by Pontius Pilate. Jesus was subjected to the worst ever punishment possible in those days...

The reason why i mentioned these 2 points is because there is undeniable proof that Jesus was a prophet who received a divine inspiration and believed in it so much that he was willing to go through the worst ever punishment for that...

Jesus had realized his place in this world... he knew who he was and why he was in this world... and he knew it so well that he was willing to die for the reason why he was in this world....

How do people realize their place in the world? I look at myself in the mirror everyday and I dont know my place... Why am I here? What is the purpose of my existence? I am quite sure that even Jesus had a period in his life when he searched for his place in the world.. I am sure he had period of self doubt... when he wanted to be like the others.. be comforted by anonymity.. being part of the crowd... just living a normal, peaceful existence.... But what made him change all that? what convinced him to realize what he was here for... and spread his message one person at a time... till it spread across the world...

On this day of Easter....I stand in awe in front of this person...
I still dont know who the stranger in the mirror is...


The intent of the post is not to "humanize" or remove the divinity of Jesus.. I have merely explored one great quality in him.

The Human Spirit or the naked ape....

Ive been staring at the walls for an hour now... i wanna write, but i don't know what to.... My heart wants to say a million words... words of anger, of regret of sadness and desperation... and still words of happiness and joy and hope... but still my mind doesn't see these words, its too jumbled for my mind to make a logical sense of them all... and my mind struggles to understand my heart.. what it wants, what it craves for.. and what sense it makes... maybe my mind will understand.. someday....

Ok, that was pretty random.. but i just put it there cuz i couldnt stop typing..

Ive been exposed to 2 different schools of thought recently... Ive been reading this book called The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris. The book is a scientific study of the human animal as any other species by a zoologist. The book explains why humans behave the way they do, whether it is thinking, or sex or romance or parenting, teh book describes every single emotion, action and thought of the human animal as a result of the evolutionary process. We are just another animal who had the brain overdeveloped as the organ to kill, just like the cheetah has strong legs and the lion has strong jaws...

The book is quite interesting and disturbing... It fascinates you, because everything that the author says makes sense... but it disturbs you cuz everything he says makes too much sense... The emotions, thoughts, beliefs and actions which we believed as so pure and important in our lives have been relegated into mere evolutionary process to make the species grow and survive in this world... It is a disturbing thought, but still the book does make us realize where we are in the larger scheme of things....

But does it make me look at the world in a different light? It did, for a few days... but then things changed.. the human being cannot just be any other animal...

I had been to the Philippines again on work... As part of the work schedule, we end up meeting consumers in their homes... Philippines is one of the poorest countries in the world... most of the families we met live in slums.. the mom we meet would have had her first child when she was 16,17 years old (Philippines being a catholic country, contraception is not promoted and child pregnancies are common).. she would have 3-4 kids and by the time she is 30, her husband leaves her for another woman.. she doesnt have the money to fend for herself or her family. The home she lives in is exposed to regular catastrophes like floods, earthquakes, typhoons...

In spite of all this, she welcomes us with a warm smile on her face.. she does not know how to survive the next day for her kids, but she is still happy... she will work, borrow and stay hungry to feed her kids.. to make sure that they are educated well.. She doesnt curse fate, she doesnt wither away.. she doesnt give up.. she takes up everyday as a day of opportunity.. a new beginning for her and her family..

I saw a movie yesterday.. its called "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly". Its the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the author of Elle Magazine, who suffered a stroke and was in Coma. When he woke up, he was paralyzed from head to toe, all he could do was move his left eyelid...

He figured out a way to communicating by by blinking when the correct letter was reached by a person slowly reciting the alphabet over and over again. The first sentence he said in this way was "I want Death". But far from it, he used this way of communication to write a book by the same name. Bauby had to compose and edit the book entirely in his head, and convey it one letter at a time. To make dictation more efficient, Bauby had his interlocutor read from a special alphabet which consisted of the letters ordered in accordance with their frequency in the French language. The book was published in France in 1997. Bauby died just ten days later of heart failure.

Break the leg of any animal and I can bet you it will die in a matter of days. Make a human completely paralyzed with the ability to just blink 1 eyelid... he will survive and author a book. Put an animal away from a water source and it will die, put a human family in abject poverty with nothing to hold on to, but still they will survive and drive joy from the smallest things in life...

Humans cannot be any other animal... they are different because they have something that is completely different from all other species... Religion calls it god, Christianity calls it the Holy Spirit, scientists call it the survival instinct, whatever it may be called.. none can deny that there is that something which exists in the human race which makes him so special...

I believe that what makes humans special is something called HOPE... Its a small 4 lettered word... which has pretty straightforward definitions in the dictionary, but it creates so much of a difference to so many lives... Its the hope of a better tomorrow that makes the mother in the slum in the Philippines wake up every day with a smile.. Its the hope of waking up one day able to move and be healthy that made Jean Dominique talk to the world by blinking his eyelid.. Along with hope, comes dreams, aspirations, ambitions, targets and achievements... but it all starts from that hope... for a better tomorrow....

I believe that the Human Animal is a Naked ape... A species called homosapiens... a monkey who can walk... who somewhere along the line.. found HOPE....