You always have a choice

How often did we hear our parents screaming, "You must choose your way of life", "You must choose whether this career is right for you", "You choose what you wish to wear", "You need to choose this", "and that", "and this and that"?
Tantalizing, weren't those times when we were at the cross roads of choosing our career paths. Well they were.
How often do we use this word, choice today? Very often I am sure.
Let's start the process with the meaning of the word choice first.
The Oxford defines Choice as an act of choosing between two or more possibilities; the right or ability to choose; a range of possibilities from which one or more may be chosen
Interesting isn't it?
Let's trace back, where we made the first ever choice of our life. 
Can you?...Its difficult I know, still I urge you to think...
Anything?....confused, not really sure are you?....Nothing strange....same feeling here folks.
Why is it such a difficult question?...Let's try and answer it.
May be its old....may be it's really old, or may be it's too old for our RAM to access.


I think, the first choice we made was to accept whatever our parents taught us...the world they made us see, the food they made us eat, the clothes they made us wear, the toys they bought for us, the etiquettes they taught us, the education they introduced us to, the school they made us attend, the subjects they made us read, the religious practice they institutioned at home, the people they made us interact and so on...in short a phase when we had none or almost negligible choices.


Then came a phase, when we suddenly discovered the wonders created by the word "Choice". It was also the phase, where maximum misuse of this concept was attempted. The reason is quite obvious. "Teenage"...when the "Nothing can stop us" kind of feeling ruled and we wanted to grab everything that came our way, again a choice.


Then there were choices of course, college, job, life partner, family and so on.


My point of argument here is the fact that "we always have a choice".


God created the universe, then He decorated it with the numerous galaxies including the Milky Way. Then He created a raging fire ball called the Sun, off which certain minute bodies teared out to become the planets. His creation was colossal, so gigantic, so daunting. But there was someting lacking....Life.
A planet was needed to host His most beautiful creation, a planet which must have the fury of fire, but also the calmness of water, a planet which must have storm, but also the soil to hold on. And that's how our beloved Mother Earth was created.
Then God blessed it with life, first came the creatures of water, then creatures of land and water, then came the creatures of air, and then came the great Apes, slowly they chose to crawl, then one fine day on Mr.Jack Ape made a choice, which is probably the most important linkage to our existence. He chose to experiment with his back and chose to stand erect and walk tall. It was difficult, he may have failed, but he chose to continue, generations after generations, tried on and on, then suddenly after thousands of millions of years of effort, Mr.Jack Ape learnt to walk erect, and his name was changed to Mr. Jack Homo Sapiens, or more commonly known to us as Mr. Jack Man. God did leave him with a vertebrae to experiment with. But nothing would have been possible, if Mr.Jack Ape didn't make a choice.


My evolution theory is not related to any of the earlier celebrated ones. It's my way of understanding the choice of creation of life.


A certain distant descendant of Mr Jack Ape, right at the time when he differentiated between his 2 sets of limbs might have faced a typical problem. That he knew that the lower limbs were to be used to move, but what will he do with his upper set of limbs. He looked at them and did something that lay the very foundation of what we are today. He chose to think. And suddenly he came up with the dea of grabbing. But mind you, thinking is something and doing is something. He chose to try, but he failed. Invariably the object used to slip. He looked at his palm again and his fingers and realized something which is one of the most important discoveries of human nature. He realized the different shape of one finger. Why was it different? He chose to think again. He thought and one of his descendants may be after certain thousand years, applied the different finger at a different angle, "the thumb". Bravo Mr Jack (x'000), Job done! The object never slipped now. A Choice.


Moving on...


Jubiliant after the discivery of thumb, he started grabbing many things which was needed for his existence and in the process, one day...he grabbed 2 stones and started playing with them. Suddenly he saw something, which shocked him. He chose to try again. He striked them against each other. Flash!
And "Fire" was discovered. A Choice.


The list moves on....till today...The Choice List


Let's now leave Mr Jack and interact with some of our men who chose to change face of human existence on this planet.


Once there used to be an Italian young gentleman, who on his father's insistence, enrolled himself for a medical degree at the University of Pisa. But, he didn't complete the course, instead studied mathematics, the subject he loved. A choice. A choice made by a young person, who later happen to become the "father of modern science". Yes we are talking about Galileo Galilei. If he chose to continue with his medical studies, the fact that Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun, mite still not have been proven. What a pity! Isn't it? Again, a choice which changed the fact of human existence.


And the list goes on...Mother Teresa, Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Lance Armstrong, Diego Maradona, Diego Forlan, our own Sachin and Sourav....


By now I suppose, you have understood the intention of my post. Lets close this already long one with the statement from one of my favourite movies, the Spiderman 2 which reads....


"Whatever comes our way, whatever battle we have raging inside us, We always have a choice. It's the choices that makes us who we are and we can always choose to do what's right."

If I had the Wings to Fly…

If I had the Wings to Fly, I would

see the whole world with my eyes
view every wonder of the world
feel the beauty & variety of Mother Nature
smell the fragrance of every flower
touch & feel the most beautiful things on this earth
witness every river uniting with the Sea
listen to every bird singing
cherish the first cry of every baby for his mother
hear every Musician play his Instrument
listen to every man telling his soul mate about his feelings
be the luckiest person on this planet !!!

Then I asked myself, is that all for which I wish to have Wings?

Then I heard a voice which said,

If I had the Wings to Fly,I would have flown

to the country where disaster has struck devastating Humanity
to support the people who became homeless due to a deadly flood
to comfort the mother who just lost her son at war
to hug the father who just lost his daughter in an act of terror
to stand by the youth whose rights are suppressed
to talk to the prisoner who stabbed a man to save his daughter
to reach the Old Age Home, where an old lady is waiting for her son for the last decade

Then I asked myself, “Do I really need wings for these?”

And I got the answer “No I don’t, All I need is the urge to sacrifice the comforts & luxuries for serving others in need of the basic necessities of life”

Again the voice said, “Life is like a flowing river…It never stops…sometimes the banks are smooth and green…sometimes they are rocky and thorny, but you shall never stop until the objective is reached”

And then I recognized the voice, it was of Conscience, and it never sounded that confident.

“Wake before it’s too late, Wake before it’s Time”