Look through the window and celebrate the world

Look through the window and celebrate the world

This morning while I was coming to the office I looked out of the car when I was standing at a traffic light. The weather was beautiful and temperate – the kind I would have loved to play cricket in all day when I was younger!

On the divider of the road, a homeless young guy was selling newspapers. His walk was fresh and defiant. As if he was daring the world.

Then I looked at the guy in the adjacent car. His face was burdened with ennui. He was off to a daily grind.

While the homeless had every moment bring a new wonder, the guy in the car had predictability asserted on his life. We strive to succeed to make our lives “stable”. And predictable. Predictability is the bed partner of ennui. Freshness to life unfortunately loses out in this battle.

It would be very wrong of me to say that lack of money brings “freshness” necessarily. It is the frame of mind. A frame of mind which welcomes the unknown with a child-like innocence and wonder. Wonder to be curious. Curious of the next moment.

If you cannot enjoy the current moment in its full-ness… the hurt, the joy, the anger, the happiness… then it is not possible to be curious of the next moment. Because if you cannot enjoy all the emotions of the current moment, then you take a baggage to the next. You approach the coming moment with feeling of the known. Happiness or sorrow or hurt is then pre-planned. You have already defined the next moment because you have analyzed the current.

“Now, look through the window and celebrate the world” X said. Y in his faithfulness to his teacher looks out and frames the scene and starts chanting hymns in its “celebration”. The world keeps going on outside the window. To capture the world in the window and making it subservient to those four sides is childish. But we all do it. We take the snapshot of the world from our windows and take it as a “forever”.

It is our way of living the future from the view of and the with the baggage of present. Present is frozen in time. The window has become the master. A master that cannot let go of its dominance.

If only Y could let the world move on. Move on in its own flow. And observe. Really celebrate the world.

Featured Image: Salvador Dalí – Person at the Window, 1925

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