Lest I Forget!

"Lest We Forget a phrase  from  "Recessional", a poem  by Rudyard Kipling, which was later passed into common usage after WW I  across the British Commonwealth,especially becoming linked with Rememberence Day observations.

The phrase became a plea not to forget past sacrifices made and is often found as the only wording on many war memorials and epitaphs.

Over the last week, during India's Independence Day Celebrations, we saw a great amount of media coverage on our brave men and women in uniform, bringing out their stories of great scarifies and bravery.

I am glad that the media does cover these stories albeit only as seasonal as the winter in Mumbai. I wish that we as individuals would remember this phrase and the feeling behind it more often even in our personal units.

On one hand I remember the brave men and women in uniform who guard my sense of safety and on the other, as the phases of my life change, easy it becomes for me to forget the so many others, out of uniform, without whose sacrifices my today would not be possible.....so, "Lest I Forget".

Two Choices

Am sure that almost all of us receive a lot of worldly wisdom in our email  inbox everyday.

I, usually having gone through them ,either instantly hit delete or the ones that are spared of my keyboard guillotine get neatly  filed and labeled under some folder, only to be forgotten among the terabytes of data I tend to collect.

However, the filing routine of my better half is a bit more complex, her email inbox is a sea of information from all corners of the world.

This habit of hers, to keep emails all in one place (part thanks to Larry & Sergey @ Google and part to our planning foresight of subcribing to almost umlimited space for our personal email account), has kept me baffled to say the least. More so, as she is able to sift through them and get the one she wants in an instant.

However one fine day,  me being me, I suggested that she needed to clean up her inbox and if she was having trouble clearing up, I could offer her the services of my experienced keyboard guillotine along with my algorithm for filing and labeling.

As we got to work mail by mail , we happened to open one and read it aloud. It was an email relating to positive attitude titled "TWO CHOICES" ( am sure most of my readers would have got this in thier inbox as well).

The email narrated the story of a man named Jerry and his optimism/postitive attitude which enabled him to make the better of the two choices he had in any situation day after day. Right from the moment when he woke up, and could choose either to be in a good mood or in a bad mood, to the more critical situations he came across.

Having read the email and being done with the task on hand, we got to our routines as usual.

Though simple, the email left its mark in my grey matter and even though at times I still end up reacting to situations in life instead of making a choice like Jerry, I've learned that life will give me another chance to make a choice....soon enough after i have reacted.