After two early morning classes and loads of work waiting for me at work, I sit down in front of my desktop in my lab and open up my browser to do the first thing I do, check mails. msn.com being my home page there was this small box with the flashing message “Terri Schiavo dies”, I thought "I have never heard this name before, what could the news possibly be about…" I click on the message and start reading out of curiosity…. the article shocked me so much that I was not able to stop reading…. I went about reading related articles, and when slowly people started coming in to work I realized this is not something I ought to be doing at work, but I somehow could not concentrate on my work the entire day. After a long day, I came back home and watched the videos of her story online.
I am not able to figure out answers for a lot of questions…. For those who really don’t know want I am talking about, (you can read up first hand information though, this is just for convenience sake) Terri Schiavo had a heart attack at the age of 25, this lead her to an incapacitated state caused by some kind of brain damage. She was not exactly in comma state but had long cycles of sleep and being awake. She was in such a state for 15 years; her husband wanted her food pipe to be removed because he claimed that she said that she did not want to live artificially and be a burden to people and her parents denied the claim. The case was taken to the court and after a long battle, the court ordered her food pipe to be removed some days ago and she eventually passed away.
I am not sure whose side to take. These are my mixed emotions....
1) If the husband really did not love the wife why would he struggle for her case and be with her in spite of her state for the past 15 years? So maybe he does understand her well
2) Its difficult from the parents point of view to just let their daughter die and they being spiritual people (as I noticed) had their hopes and trust high
3) The husband wanted to full fill her wish and not want her to struggle?
4) The parents saw no reason how a mortal can decide whether she should die when he did not give her life?
5) The husband thought it would do her suffering soul good because she had absolutely no senses of her surroundings and was not actually living a life?
6) The parent’s thought whatever her state was, she had the right to live and all she needed was love and care?
7) Can a judicial court actually decide something as critical as this?
This sure has disturbed me….But now that she has gone, what are we to learn out of this? What best I can do now is pray for her soul and pray even harder that no one else should face such a struggle ever ever ever!!! I would like to hear some comments about this issue….
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Thursday, March 03, 2005
A Cherished Celebration
It’s been quite sometime since I wrote a blog, the semester sure has kept me busy. Not that its less busy now, but somehow I have noticed that whatever it is you scramble to find time to do what you really love to do, so here you go my next blog.
I somehow have this habit of hovering over my past, I really don’t know if its right, some people say we should live in the present, plan for the future etc…alright, alright makes sense, but somehow the past has a special place in my mind and it just thought me something…read up to find out.
Childhood! That innocent age in between say 5 to 12 maybe…. When every new thing you see, learn and experience is exciting, it’s more about how you teach yourself and mould yourself by closely observing. What might seem trivial to older people was in fact exciting at that age. We would have tried it all! I am sure you would relate to whatever I say when you read the list of things I still vividly remember about my childhood. Even though they might seem inconsequential…I am sure they have made a difference to the person I am today.
1) Teacher – Made my doll buddies sit in a row on the stair case, set up the little black board dad got for me, smuggled my grandma’s glasses ( and yeh the glasses had to be at the tip of my nose to get the perfect teacher effect, couldn’t see a thing with them up against my eye anyway) and thought them how to write the alphabets. Believe me they paid much more attention than actual students do (ahem, they at least had their eyes open)
2) Artist – Make my mom get me coloring books and color all the pages within a week and grin and smile at her to get me another one…finally, she even made me promise once that I would keep one book for at least 2 months, I still have that book unfinished of the fear of finishing it off within 2 months.
3) Agriculturist – Plant the seeds of all the fruits I ate (once I learnt trees grow out of seeds) in a particular location in the garden and marked that place with some identification like a dried flower circle or something, so that I could return to it every day and pour water, wonder if any plants came out of them at all…. but optimism was not lacking.
4) Horticulturist – After learning in school that grafting is a way in which a few plants grow, I tried it out with the rose stems out of the bouquet, my parents got for some reason.
5) Fashion Designer – Designed and stitched clothes for my Barbie dolls and made sure I got the color combinations right even with the little scrap materials I had, and yeh they did not go without the little bead accessories I made too. Had to be perfect anyways!
6) Cosmetician – Looked up the ingredients of an herbal shampoo and tried making my own by crushing hibiscus, henna and egg together. I did not dare to use my own formula though…it was for the benefit of the Barbies he he!
7) Architect – Spent a long time building sand castles and decorate them with shells and hoist a little flag to make you feel proud of your achievement, even when I knew it would be washed away when the first big wave came by.
8) Environmentalist – messed up the mixer jar with a sticky paste of glue and bits of used paper in the attempt to recycle paper
9) Chef – lighted up a few dried twigs and leaves in between two bricks in one corner of the terrace and made a small meal with the little rice and a few spices I stole from the kitchen. No one dared to be the connoisseurs of my food except the darling crows.
And so much more that don’t come to my mind at this instance, but do crop up when related incidents happen in my life.
What I gather out of this thought is that I haven’t really been all that successful in all the above cases, just attempted out of excitement and “want” to do, it really did not matter if it went wrong or right, what mattered is the attempt and the joy of what I did! Why am I now scared about failing in what I do, why has the “want to do” feeling faded and “have to do” feeling set in. Has growing older done any good at all? Maybe it has after all, but where is all the excitement, enthusiasm and involvement. What’s scaring or stopping me now? I guess its time to wake up and revive those glorious days! To Celebrate Life! Eternally….
I somehow have this habit of hovering over my past, I really don’t know if its right, some people say we should live in the present, plan for the future etc…alright, alright makes sense, but somehow the past has a special place in my mind and it just thought me something…read up to find out.
Childhood! That innocent age in between say 5 to 12 maybe…. When every new thing you see, learn and experience is exciting, it’s more about how you teach yourself and mould yourself by closely observing. What might seem trivial to older people was in fact exciting at that age. We would have tried it all! I am sure you would relate to whatever I say when you read the list of things I still vividly remember about my childhood. Even though they might seem inconsequential…I am sure they have made a difference to the person I am today.
1) Teacher – Made my doll buddies sit in a row on the stair case, set up the little black board dad got for me, smuggled my grandma’s glasses ( and yeh the glasses had to be at the tip of my nose to get the perfect teacher effect, couldn’t see a thing with them up against my eye anyway) and thought them how to write the alphabets. Believe me they paid much more attention than actual students do (ahem, they at least had their eyes open)
2) Artist – Make my mom get me coloring books and color all the pages within a week and grin and smile at her to get me another one…finally, she even made me promise once that I would keep one book for at least 2 months, I still have that book unfinished of the fear of finishing it off within 2 months.
3) Agriculturist – Plant the seeds of all the fruits I ate (once I learnt trees grow out of seeds) in a particular location in the garden and marked that place with some identification like a dried flower circle or something, so that I could return to it every day and pour water, wonder if any plants came out of them at all…. but optimism was not lacking.
4) Horticulturist – After learning in school that grafting is a way in which a few plants grow, I tried it out with the rose stems out of the bouquet, my parents got for some reason.
5) Fashion Designer – Designed and stitched clothes for my Barbie dolls and made sure I got the color combinations right even with the little scrap materials I had, and yeh they did not go without the little bead accessories I made too. Had to be perfect anyways!
6) Cosmetician – Looked up the ingredients of an herbal shampoo and tried making my own by crushing hibiscus, henna and egg together. I did not dare to use my own formula though…it was for the benefit of the Barbies he he!
7) Architect – Spent a long time building sand castles and decorate them with shells and hoist a little flag to make you feel proud of your achievement, even when I knew it would be washed away when the first big wave came by.
8) Environmentalist – messed up the mixer jar with a sticky paste of glue and bits of used paper in the attempt to recycle paper
9) Chef – lighted up a few dried twigs and leaves in between two bricks in one corner of the terrace and made a small meal with the little rice and a few spices I stole from the kitchen. No one dared to be the connoisseurs of my food except the darling crows.
And so much more that don’t come to my mind at this instance, but do crop up when related incidents happen in my life.
What I gather out of this thought is that I haven’t really been all that successful in all the above cases, just attempted out of excitement and “want” to do, it really did not matter if it went wrong or right, what mattered is the attempt and the joy of what I did! Why am I now scared about failing in what I do, why has the “want to do” feeling faded and “have to do” feeling set in. Has growing older done any good at all? Maybe it has after all, but where is all the excitement, enthusiasm and involvement. What’s scaring or stopping me now? I guess its time to wake up and revive those glorious days! To Celebrate Life! Eternally….
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