| 30. SATSANGAM A Slice of Life - a must read for all of us out there... All of us have special friends who share our joy and sorrows with us, or at least, the opportunity to make such friends. But very few of us actually realize just how special they are. Good friends are like family, and like our family members, our good friends are often taken for granted. Appreciated when times are good, grateful for when times get hard, but rarely cherished for their true value, until they are gone. Edward Palmer had such a special friend, and he wrote this poem for her when he discovered that she had contracted cancer? Special friends are special people Special friends won't let you down Friends will never really go Though they're near or far apart Special friends are special people A special poem for a special friend, written by Edward Palmer. Our time on this earth is not guaranteed? not for you, me, or anyone we know. Like stars, we are born, we shine, we fade, and then we burn out and die. This cycle of existence is unalterable. What we can change is our attitudes towards the people around us, especially our friends and family. We can all shine a little brighter for the people around us, and light up their night sky for as long as we can. Golden Windows If there's one criticism I have about this age that we live in, it must be the way children are brought up to respect and pursue material wealth above other things. In this rapidly-advancing society, the virtue of contentment can easily be chucked aside in favour of the crazed pursuit of more and more money. Of course, one has to earn a respectable living, but we should not be so consumed by greed and ambition that we neglect the other things in life. Besides, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow may not turn out to be as desirable as you thought it was. Leo Hallon writes? There was a small boy living on a farm which seemed like so far away from every where. He needed to get up before sunrise every morning to start his chores and out again later to do the evening ones. During sunrise he would take a break and climb up on the fence so in the distance he could see the house with golden windows. He thought how great it would be to live there and his mind would wander to imagine the modern equipment and appliances that might exist in the house. "If they could afford golden windows, then there must have other nice things." He then promised himself, "Some day I will go there and see this wonderful place." Then one morning his father told him to stay at home and his father would do the chores. Knowing that this was his chance, he packed a sandwich and headed across the field towards the house with the golden windows. As the afternoon went on, he began to realize how he misjudged the distance and something else was very wrong. As he approached the house, he saw no golden windows but instead a place with in bad need of a painting surrounded by a broken down fence. He went to the tattered screen door and knocked. A small boy very close to his age opened the door. He asked him if he had seen the house with the golden windows. The boy said "Sure, I know." and invited him to sit on the porch. As he sat there, he looked back from where he just came where the sunset turned the windows on his home to Gold. A story written by Leo Hallon. We may sometimes be envious of the luxury and success that some people seem to bathe in. We compare it with our seemingly mundane and simple lifestyles, and start to dream of one day being able to live that kind of life, to afford that house with golden windows. And so we embark on the fervent pursuit of material
wealth, toiling and slaving, trampling on others, and sacrificing love
and friendship. But when we finally achieve our objective, will we look
back and realise that everything we needed, we had all along, and that
we had thrown it all away in pursuit of an illusion? Contd... Sri P Gopi Krishna |