father forgets...

For the young of today, who will become old of tomorrow:

Father Forgets by W Livingstone Larned.

common cold chaos...

As I write this… Sneeze… I have come two days away from the situation where my nose had become almost of the color of a… cough… cough… monkey’s ass. Sneeze… You never know when it catches you – the common… sneeze… cold. You sleep happily after watching your favorite movie, and… cough… cough… when you wake up you realize that all night you have been… sneeze… breathing with your mouth open. Worst if you reach your work without a kerchief or tissues. In last two days, I had thrown three… sneeze… kerchiefs after they reached the brim of their liquid soaking patience, while the fourth is on its… sneeze… test. AAAHH... Gaawwd!!!

According to wikipedia “Common cold leads to 75 to 100 million physician visits at a conservative cost estimate of $7.5 billion per year. Americans spend $2.9 billion on over-the-counter drugs and another $400 million on prescription medicines for symptomatic relief.” Can you believe it? There is a big money making opportunity here… if a textile/FMCG company can come up with something innovative for the running nose, on similar lines of sanitary napkins but without letting the nose turn red by the cloth-friction, how much revenue it can draw every year! I will definitely buy the IPO if the co lists on any of the exchanges!

The interesting/sad point is that there isn’t a medicine for the virus which causes the common cold. If you thoroughly read this article, you will find that in a healthy immunocompetent individual, the common cold last seven days on an average. Whatever medicines we take (CROCIN, PCM, Aspirin blah blah…) only focus on relieving the symptoms. They don’t and can’t do anything to the virus.

Prevention is the only best possibility of staying away from this chaotic inevitability. Noble Prize winner Linus Pauling was supporter of the Vitamin C Megadosage theory of preventing the viral infection. In 1970 he published a bestseller book – ‘Vitamin C and the Common Cold’. But overdose of Vitamin C does something bad of the Iron content of body, so be careful before trying anything!

Meanwhile… aaa… aaa… AAACHHHEEE… I will go and buy another set of... AAACCHHHHHEEEE... kerchiefs… Sob… Sob... Mom... :(...

fearlessness...

Fearlessness is that state of mind, when a person has come to know that nothing can disturb him anymore. No matter what happens, he is going to be at peace with himself and the universe. Not even death can bring him to his knees.

But then there are people who proclaim that they are fearless by frightening others. If left alone, they can kill themselves, which is why solitary confinement tramples the pride of hardest of criminals. Even an insane person living in a mental asylum can say that he is fearless. This kind of fearlessness is not true, its just pretense. A mad man may say that he is not afraid of anyone, but he is afraid of himself and the society is afraid of him. A true fearless man is he who has won his own fears and his very presence removes the fears of people surrounding him.

The origin of fear is weakness, fatigue and lack of knowledge. Sometimes we are just afraid that we will divulge the secret that we are weak and tired. Then there are fears of losing and being lost. Sometimes we are afraid of ourselves so much that it causes depression, it makes us hate ourselves. Some get so scared that they commit suicide or come near to killing themselves.

There is this very interesting concept – Pareto’s 80-20 Statistics. According to this 80% of the problems are caused by 20% of the problems. That is, if we can wash away the small traces of fear from our thoughts, we can remove big existential problems from our life.

Relaxed mind is not afraid. Only knowledge can ward off fear.

One day, I want to look in the face of the fear and say – ‘I am not afraid anymore’.