Twinkle Twinkle Little Star....

Let me put it straight.... "We've stopped gazing at the stars"...... It may seem like a simple enough statement but the ramifications are immense.

Have we ever thought.... What was the need for the ancient star gazers to make complex calculations about the distance of the Sun from the earth?... Wasn't his existence on earth, filled with enough hardships, so as to dissuade him from undertaking such tedious exercises?..... The learned amongst us may answer using terms like Motivation, Need for achievement and self-actualization. But I'd simply say, they had the time and the inclination to look up at the sky..... simply put, they were star gazers, because they looked up at the stars....

Today, when we look up the stars, we may end up marveling a man-made sattelite instead.... but then again, there is no dearth of stars on earth.... People who have achieved what others couldn't even dream.... People who have taken human capabilities to the edges of possibilities and sometimes even beyond..... People from all walks of life.... Business, social works, entertainment, theology, philosophy and sometimes, even something as mundane as public administration.... choose any walk of life and you might find a plethora of stars making up the "Walk of fame"......

Media has made it all the more easy for us to take a closer look at these stars.... Media works as a long range telescope that brings us closer to the stars....sometimes, too close for comfort....... We see people winning awards, being gifted some of the costliest cars around.... buying some of the best indulgences, money can buy..... if we want to, all this can really influence us.... even to the point of positive influence.... motivation...... but that is where the catch lies.... IF we want to... The trouble is, we are more worried about the potholes on the road than the stars in the sky..... we are more worried about the garment selection process of the pretty-young-thing across the building, than the endless sky that makes a quiet background to that building......

We need to look up more often..... we are all, finally, a bunch of frogs in a well.... the difference between us is probably that some are looking at the abyss below, some are looking at the darkness around... while some are looking at the skies above..... it is a different story whether we'll be able to get out or not.... but at least we'd have lived a different life....