when you least expect it.

I spoke with my friend Rosa tonight.
I met her years ago, in 1998, in a small town in southern India.
We were practically the same person - physical resemblance aside, we shared the same dreams, ideals, and beliefs. There is no one else who knows as much about me and has been with me through my worst moments.
Our families spent as much time together as possible during those years I lived in India. If not for her family, liberal and open minded as they are, I am certain that I would have suffocated under the oppressive atmosphere that is so characteristic of India.
As kids who grew up with physicians as parents, our intertwined dream was to become pediatricians, to share a large home - dreams that only kids dream of. In the end, we went our separate paths - she to law school, I to medical - and our lives drifted outwards, in different directions and yet we lived our lives, unknowingly, in parallel.
Her grandfather died at the same time my grandpa did - their funerals were on the same day. Neither knew of the other's loss; we struggled with the same grief and change in ways we never thought we would and yet all the while, worlds apart.
I spoke with her tonight. I see how little has changed between us - our lives run in parallel, our dreams as well. When I tell her of my plan to quit and become a teacher, she is shocked. Only yesterday, she says, she has shared this idea with another friend. We have become disillusioned with the whole process of education and the paths that we've taken but ultimately, we both decide - as we already have - that quitting may be a mistake and we both agree that we will work for a few years, fill up our bank accounts and "branch out", see where life takes us. It's not that we're not ambitious; we are, just in a different sense. We see life as something different - not a cycle perhaps, but a line, with an end. No propagation, no perpetuation. To live, to make a difference, to forget rituals and set patterns.

I hope we will be reunited. I hope that we will soon pick up where we left off so many years ago. That we will share dreams and hopes and ideals. That we will dip our feet in a swirling river, eat chunks of white chocolate, tell tales of fairies and giants, make leafy hobbit-like homes, and be the best of friends that we've been, even in all these years apart.

when what you say you don't want is taken away from you by force and not by your own will, does that leave you as happy as you thought it would? or is the argument simply a matter of whether you have a control over your own destiny?

studying pathology while listening to the music of the shire

A life to be lived.

Whatever you choose to do, live with purpose.
Life cannot be about deadlines and schedules. Often, we judge our worth by wealth and power and status - societal ideologies which are noxious to the human spirit. Our worth is far more than the judgment men pass on us; it is determined by the level of happiness we create for ourselves - whatever our circumstances may be.
Undoubtedly, happiness varies from person to person and I am no judge of what constitutes happiness for each individual but often people define their life, void of happiness as it is, by society's expectations.
My idea of happiness?
Life in a dusty town out west, one of minimalism, discipline - moth moral and physical, a limitless supply of books, and one dedicated to the betterment of humanity.
Such is ideal.

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.

I watched Ripple of Hope last night, a documentary on Bobby Kennedy's reaction to Dr. King's assassination. The speech he gives, to an impassioned and enraged crowd on the night of the assassination, sends them peacefully home. Kennedy, for the first time in five years, brings up Jack's assassination and speaks of the loss he too has experienced at the hands of a white man. His point in doing so is to elucidate the matter at hand: that hatred and prejudice are indiscriminately present in all societies, that one act of bloodshed is not made right by retaliation. Retaliation, as made evident throughout history, serves only to propagate the "mindless menace of violence." Kennedy's speech erased the lines between color that night and prompted the country to move toward forgiveness and compassion toward men regardless of the color of their skin.