A few quotes I like

-There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.

-Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

-Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.

-Freedom is of the mind. The body, is always a slave.

-All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.

-In the game of life, it's a good idea to have a few early losses, which relieves you of the pressure of trying to maintain an undefeated season.

-Live every day as if it were your last, because one of these days you will be right.

-If you can't see the bright side of life, polish the dull side.

-The only cure for grief is action.

-Spiteful words can hurt your feelings but silence breaks your heart.

-Regrets cannot change fate.

-We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.

-Worry is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere.

-There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has the right to blame us.

-A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.

-The passion of hatred is so long lived and so obstinate a malady that the surest sign of death in a sick person is their desire for reconciliation.

-The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.

-To most of us the real life is the life we do not lead.

-To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.

Opportunity

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
- Thomas Alva Edison

“It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.”

 “If you wait for opportunities to occur, you will be one of the crowd.”

 

Love and poetry

The warmth of the shining star,

The calm of a mountain pond,

The sweet of the flowers belly,

and the fragrance of the morning dew,

With love in my bosom, my life,

is as beautiful, as it is new!


Love. Makes poets out of many and drunkards out of many many. :)

As much as I have read and seen, I can say this with authority that love generates more pain and agony than happiness and satisfaction. Period. But we can't stop loving can we?

Also it's actually strange that most people like remembering that pain and revelling in it. You don't poke the thorn back into your leg just to relive that pain and relish it, do you?

Yet, here we are, in a world where people love the failures in love....and the poetry that follows.

Many would argue that the poetry would never happen if not for the failure. Fair point. and also that the poetry gives an expression to the un-spoken feelings. Fair point again. But the poetry in love is far sweeter than out of it.

God - The concept

God is a very interesting topic and I should say, an unending and an arguably impossible topic to bring people to a consensus on.

But there are some important points related to the concept:

1. First up, God is a powerful thing/being to which/whom you can turn to when you can't control something.
In olden times(really olden times) the king was either a God or a messenger of God...for reasons which were part of the above statement. God is a concept, and can be applied to living things as well as non-living things. Hence the innumerable number of Gods in the world.

2. Every religion needs money and power.(in the human world)
How will you build temples, mosques, churches without it? You donate to the temple to keep your faith alive in this world full of people and powers who want to suppress your faith and impose theirs on you. History has numerous examples of powerless faiths being wiped out and converted to powerful ones. Even in this advanced age(really?), this is a big fear of a large number of people around the world. Even in India there are multiple tribal faiths which are facing being wiped out because of conversions. So your God needs money and offerings. The priest/father/mullah will tell you this in one way or the other.


3. Every religion needs proofs of God's miracles. Without those proofs the religion cannot withstand the questioning of another religion. The proofs could be an epic like Ramayana, or the Quran or Bible, or architectural, like buildings or natural formations(hills, caves, lakes etc) with a believable story about the origins of the proof. It could also be an event marked in history. like the eruption of a dormant volcano, death of a tyrant who might have targeted people of a particular faith.

4. Every religion needs to show an incentive to the follower to believe in it. This is the reason why every religion markets that a true believer in its faith has a great afterlife and a non-believer has hell waiting for him. It can be understood as a) follower acquisition(incentive, heaven etc) and then, b) follower retention.(fear of going to hell, if you do not believe).

5. Every religion needs highly confident/intelligent marketing manager(s) to propagate the faith and convince new members to join in.Mullahs, Fathers, Nuns, priests come under this category. 

If I decide to start a new religion, I need to take care of points 3, 4 and 5 very well. Point 2 will follow and point 1 can be proved for my God through the judicious use of point 2 and 3.

From an atheist's point of view all major religions have followed these rules very well. He believes there is no truth in the claims of these religions because he can always point out one or the other flaws that cannot be completely explained by them.
 An inquisitive true believer asks questions too, but only within the purview of the religion he follows. For questions that do not have clear enough answers he supposes that he is not "deserving" enough to "get" the answer, and hence approaches the religious manuscripts or the preachers/gurus/mullahs/fathers. 
If the religion is very well developed/framed, most of these un-answerable questions will dissolve into God, someone who can do anything and everything and should not be questioned.

Even with this outlook of religion, faith and God, I still follow a particular religion and its practices. Why?
Because religion is not just about God. It's about how to live my life without thinking too much about the whys of this world. The world is here to experience and engage it and not to keep thinking why.
 Yeah.

And frankly, who cares about the God?