When I wrote in my blog that I prefer taking the unbeaten track and dance to the beats of a distant drummer, I did not quite remember the last time when I did so. May be it was about a year or 2 back but since then the interval in between have been populated with so many events that it seems to be ages away...
May be in the interval in between I have grown comfortable in my self-created cocoon or may be the situation have been so that I have preferred to choose more comfort in the process..
I still remember when I was student of Homoeopathy when we as student used to study the philosophy of Homoeopathy written by the founder Dr. Samuel Hahnemann called the Organon of Medicine, the most prominent thing that I remember to this day is a quotation from Horace which Hahnemann had put in the beginning of the book - "Aude Sapere".... This translates in to its English equivalent "Dare to be Wise". Hahanemann goes on to explain that in science we must be willing to explore, think innovatively and basically step out of our comfort zone... That's when we will step in to hitererto unexplored realm and sail in to uncharted water...
The significance of this statement and the quotation had a profound effect on my life as continuously I have denied being cast in to a mould and always have an inner restlessness to venture out in to the unknown and explore new avenues...
I may say that I always have heard to my heart's calling and let it rule over my mind most of the time... This has always earned rich dividend for me in not only giving me a better experience but also making me a stronger and better person than I have been previously...
True, sometimes I lose sight of this fact and slip in to a comforting lull only to be waked rudely by my inner spirit which is always restless and untiring... This has always enabled me to chart in to uncharted water and make a difference to myself and to the lives of those I come across in the course of my journey...
Time and again I have come across people, my 'superiors' and well wishers who think that they can take control of this spirit, tame it, repress it and in the process make it more 'content' and 'settled' in life... But each time I have broken from such mould and went on to explore new territories...
It is not because either I am arrogant, insolent or insensitive to their feelings... But somewhere deep down I feel that this constant drive of my spirit is what keeps me going, not letting me get in to the mould or be part of a crowd... I think this is the strength which incessantly drives me forward in life...
When I was a child we used to read Ulyses by Lord Alfred Tennyson where the protagonist exhorts his ship mate thus:
"It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags....
That hoard and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees....
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart...
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ Gleams that untravell’d world,
whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life. .....
... this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought...
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all:
but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done...
Come, my friends, ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world...
Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows;
for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset,
and the baths Of all the western stars until I die... "
So is it for me.... I will always keep n setting up the sails of my ship in new directions and let the strong wind of my spirit and destiny guide me to places where no one has ever been... To a place which has always been my Utopia....
