That the world is getting a crazy place to live in with every passing day, is no big secret. As the French street artist JR, winner of TED prize 2011 very appropriately puts it, "You have dictators ruling the world, population is growing by the million, there's no more fish in the sea, the North Pole is melting and...we're all becoming fat. Except maybe French people!" And things are no different at home. There are so many things wrong with the way the country's been run, so many things amiss in how our nation and our society is evolving as a whole...at times it just feels like this big bowl of spaghetti. You lift out just a little with your fork and end up having a huge pile of tangled 'serpentines' looping around in your plate.You pick out some and the whole lot comes slithering in. But that's the way things are. Somehow, some way you've got to toughen it out and make your way around all the burgeoning towers of madness, hypocrisy and gloom.
But somewhere in all this cheerless horror-show, some stubborn little ray of light does coax its way into centre-field. And in dark times like the ones we are living through now, this little ray of sunshine can appear so luminescent and dazzling and... irresistibly 'adorable' that for once your cynical self is inclined to throw all caution to the wind and cuthect every bit of yourself and your soul in that one lonely island of hope amidst a black sea of death and destruction.
I'm thinking about this article by Ayaz Amir that appeared in the Opinion section of today's The News. Read it and see if it doesn't make you all warm and happy inside. Simple acts of kindness, little caramel-coated jewels of generous giving and selfless serving are perhaps the most beautiful things on God's green earth. And there's absolutely nothing you can do with them except let yourself be inspired by their pure beauty and try to pass it on. As much as you can. Wherever you can.