Hyderabad 12

Part two
I

Yes, there's a part two. And with good reason. I went home on Sunday. It was a surprise visit that exceeded expectations. Other than the 'special train' that reached vizag over three hours late, the rest of the trip was a piece of heaven. It was like saying goodbye and then bringing my parents back with me to Hyderabad. That trip will not be described or scribed. I can't do it justice yet.

Appreciation requires contentment and a certain level of happiness. It makes better sense when we think about what we appreciate. Beauty, intelligence, wisdom, skill, character, harmony…all these are things that simply fly over our radar when we are not open to them. It means that when we are busy looking at ourselves, our faults, our trivial problems, our own deficiencies, we cannot appreciate anything. I need to spell out here that recognition and appreciation are completely different. An insecure person recognizes beauty, but can only think of its impermanence or fed his own inadequacies with it. Funnily, egotism is more conducive to appreciation, than insecurity. Of course, the egotist invariably compares himself positively with every good thing he sees. So what I glean from this line of thought is that even blatant egotism is better than self-pity. Life is to be appreciated, admired and acknowledged. Self-pity leaves no room to acknowledge anything besides our own imagined inadequacies. Finally, appreciation indicates goodness. It is, after all, the recognition of good in others. And my father told me that we can recognize goodness only when we have it ourselves. So stop and smell the roses, feel the air, the weight of your steps on the ground, remember a good deed, smile at the girl who looks at you from the corner of her eye. Appreciate beauty and become beautiful.

Boredom and fatigue are irrevocably joined. I'm bored, sleepy, disinterested in my work. I want to lie down and sleep for a long time and wake up and do nothing. I shouldn't have had that lunch. Didn't eat much, but apparently, it was enough to make me feel so, so drowsy. I have work to do, lots of it, before I start working in earnest. Then I have even more work to do. I'm sleepy and bored and drunk. I want to sleep. My eyelids are drooping.

-Ananda