It seems like they all decided to swoop down on me today. They hardly know each other, one of them definitely doesn’t know that I even exist and I’m sure they never conspired to set my brain in a fine muddle of self directed questions. In only living their lives the best that they can (and by best, I’m talking superlative) these fine people have got me thinking- yes thinking- and for once, not in terms of beguiling mark numbers and misleading grades: what on earth am I really up to?

The first of these three did intend to make me think. Not me, really, but all those who have an elegant habit of reading good books, or those like me who have friends with this elegant habit, and the even more elegant habit of gifting good books. I wonder if Richard Bach is really aware of how a simple stroke of his pen can send my neurons into a tizzy, on a wild chase to dig out that effulgent being he claims is hidden somewhere inside of me. I could, he professes, achieve everything that I want, if I only believe. But the trick is to believe. (There’s another trick, a much more basic one too, that is I have to know what I want, but we’ll deal with that later.) Jonathan Livingstone Seagull knew what he wanted. Nobody understood it, and they certainly didn’t understand why he went after what he did, and Jonathan never cared to explain. He didn’t know why he wanted it either, but that didn’t matter: he wanted it bad enough to achieve it. As I curled up in my bed with the book, soaring with Jon’s every effort to reach break neck speed, crashing into a heap of feathers and water with his every failure, I found woven into the words before me, a poignant depiction of the pain I have become so familiar with of late. I identified with Jonathan as he lay broken on the water, staring at another unsuccessful effort, thinking of his limitations, while his heart burst with the agony of not being able to give up and accept the mundane. Of course, Jon took wing again, soared to reach his dreams and much more, to finish the author’s work of sending out a message of self belief and perseverance and raising my spirits with him. Oh, and of course, making me think. But the part of the book that really brought a tear to my eye, was when Jon leaves Fletch to move on to another world. You don’t need me to teach you anymore, he tells Fletch, may be you have to find your teacher in yourself. There are few people who understand those lines the way I do.

My teary reverie was broken by my buddy, who called to tell me that he’d sent me a draft of his curriculum vitae, and that he wanted my suggestions to polish it to perfection. Getting online, I found this twenty three year old had a four page cv! Four pages! Geesh! I wondered what my cv would look like. It would barely fill four lines, I guess. Name: Ashkelonian Relic. Qualifications: Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery. Other activities…. No; it’s too painful. No writing cv’s for now. I opened other mail, and found one from G.

G, of course, is the one who started it all. She introduced me to Richard Bach years ago, with my now favourite “Illusions”. She was now e mailing to tell me that she was in this exotic country, teaching computer science to college students older than her, because she wanted the experience. G has way of doing things in a grand, though understated, way. She’s a researcher, and researchers always fascinate me as being those blessed people who are so enchanted by the beauty of the universe that they yearn for more than it offers the untrained eye. They’re the ones who want to change the earth every second, and to keep up with the changes that happen by a power beyond us, the wide eyed curiosity that we’re all born with being their faithful companion their entire lives. It was with G that I honestly spoke about my dreams for the first time in many years. We talked about chasing it, and how the path seemed strewn with minor obstacles I had seen few people overcome. We talked about what it would mean to realise it, and what it would mean to give it up. Though I was listening to everything G had to say, I was really thinking about the difference between myself and what I wanted to be. The reason why G is this fascinating person, why my buddy has this four page cv, why Bach’s Seagull shines immaculate is that they all found the courage to break the bonds of common conventions and wisdom that teach us to be ‘one of the flock’. While most of us find an illusion of security in the mundane, and balk away in fear from the unexplored, these guys eschew that which reduces life to a programmed cycle of night and day. They are the ones who keep alive inside of them, the zest for living each day to the fullest. And they have the audacity to live life the way they like it. Without giving in to ostents and laws and norms handed down for generations. I thought about it: None of us is going to live forever. For the Universe, we’re hardly a speck. It really matters to nobody whether you live life on the edge or just roll along a physical existence, living by rules you accepted without ever questioning their authenticity. Nobody other than yourself. So I think it’s up to each one of us to make the call- grovel with the unimaginative, or soar with the courageous.