In the mood for...?

First and foremost, I am in the mood to write...Thunder is rumbling in the far off sky, my staff room has this sleepy, cold and yet somehow soothing feel to it today...or is the feeling of calm within, a sense of reconciliation with the self and the world, with its abundant goodness and necessary obstacles? I have been having deep conversations with people very close to me, off late, a treat indeed...and the other day I was just thinking of how one of my favourite books, (in fact, quite a universal classic) ended...I'm speaking of 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' where Atticus, lawyer, father, but most of all human, passes on a gem of wisdom to his children...of how the best way to understand people is to walk into and creep around in their skins, how, when and if we do that, we can't possibly label ANYONE bad...and someone extremely close to me offered his views on looking at things from a range of perspectives and how that sometimes deters him from taking extreme stands...this ackowledgement of multiple truths, co-existing in, often divisive subjectivies, can ironically help to unite us...I read Harper Lee's work when I was 14, but it seems to be just yesterday when my father, who would talk about the book all the time when I was growing up, deemed me old enough to read it... At that point in our lives, his mother was suffering from cancer, and it was trying, emotionally, spiritually and physically...and he took me out one day and said that I was ready to read the book...I didn't realise until after I read it that my father didn't buy it for me earlier as the book dealt with the topic of sexual transgression, (No spoilers) around which the court case Atticus fights on behalf on Tom Robinson revolves. I've always been in awe of people who fight for those who are denied a voice, for people who are not afraid to speak up against perceived 'wrongs,' without a heed for their self-interest...and for Atticus to conclude that it is difficult to label people 'bad,' after the slew of experiences he and his family go through, after the jaw-dropping denial of justice and truth, at least on a legal scale, after the physical assault on his innocent son, for him to say that, is one of the most heightened processes of ethical evolution and acceptance of the world I have or will possibly ever see...I think Atticus could serve as a role model for all the parents of the world, and the genius of the book lies in Lee's choice of Lens---she narrates this story of complexity, racism, inherent prejudice and coming to terms with the world,people and situations through the eyes of a five yea rold child, Atticus's little girl, Scout. And this takes me back to another man whom I admire so immensely...Abraham Lincoln, who, for me, is the example of one of the finest models of humanity...as I mentioned earlier, I have and will immensely admire hosts of people who have fought for the deliberately down-trodden, have taken firm stands against oppression and injustice...be it Dr. Ambedkar, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Touissant L'overture to Martin Luther King...but here we have a White President, undermining, disregarding his position of privilege as a White, as positions of privilege often breed indifference towards the plight of the 'other,'because those in this seat of comfort are not active sufferers, but silent, sometimes distantly sympathetic observers, when they are not the perpetrators...Lincoln, who uses his position of power, the seat of the President, to implement a necessary change,even if it means ruffling and throwing into disorder his immediate context, who is so committed to the notion of universalising the concept of his Gettysburg Address, that he risks his nation to the grip of Civil War, believing that it will once again be united through a common notion of humanity and according human rights to the unfairly treated, and isn't afraid to overturn the status quo...in his desire for the abolition of slavery... Moving on, I need to dwell on the four letter word which is loaded with lineage and legacy...LOVE...the more I experience it, in its various forms, in its infinite potential and glorious epiphany, the more I witness it, the more it rises, like a transcendental balloon, hovering over the reach of all, until one makes a concerted and active effort, to reach out...what is love? The quiet sacrifices parents make over years, from simple deeds like watching over their children eat, feeling full when they are fed, feeling rested when they sleep soundly, feeling happy when they succeed, feeling wronged if they are hurt, scolding them into self-rectification? Is love the emotion which makes you crave for a lot more than can be fit in to the temporal constraints of 24 hours a day, when saying goodbye to your partner, for a couple of hours makes you inexplicably yearn? Is it the calm assurance of holding the other's hand, deriving from that clasp physical and emotional comfort? Is it the way in which you begin to shape and fashion your identity in relation to someone else's, holding on to certain necessary independent beliefs, but willingly merging on others? Is it the burning feeling of wishing to be connected at all levels, at all times, in all ways, and trying to figure out how it was that you managed to survive on your own all these years without feeling the need to have always been with this other half of your whole? Of giving some part of your soul to another, which you didn't even realise existed? Of being half afraid that the dream will stir, that one might have to carry him/herself back to that state of loneliness which he/she had/have gotten used to, but will never, like Theseus's Ship, quite be the same, after love has taken one apart from that self...one can't be forced into a semblance of his/her former shadow... Is Love, then like a compass which gives one direction, but what leads us to that compass? Choices?Destiny? Divine Intervention? Human Intervention? Epiphanic inspiration? Intelligence? Common Sense?