Showing posts with label questions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label questions. Show all posts

Wednesday, 2 April 2014

I want it all?

I want it all and I want it right now! That seem to be the mantra these days. The next of kin of the ill fated plane want to all the nitty gritty details down to the technical details of the search thus far. They feel that they are being taken for a ride. Too many rumour mongers and conspiracy theorist are out there every ready to spin yet another spanner questioning the legitimacy of yet another finding of experts. They say information is king but is it really?
Looks more to me that ignorance is bliss. The more you want to know, the more there is to be found out. When the roads are aplenty and the directions are aplenty, one is bound to be lost and maybe caught in maze or roller coaster!
The patient wants to know all the minute details of the operation that she is due to undergo, right down to the rarest of complications. Murphy's law, being Murphy's law, may strike at a time when we least expect. I wonder what she really wants to know. I remember an incidence in a University Hospital some 20 years ago when patient empowerment and medical litigation was rearing its ugly head. A lady was scheduled by a Senior Professor for a rather major cancer surgery. A day before the planned surgery, she was reviewed by an anaesthetic doctor to ascertain her anaesthetic risks. The doctor did his due diligence and rattled off all the possible problems that she could encounter in the long and tedious surgery. In not so many words, he told her that may die on the table after looking at the myriad of medical ailments she was having. She created such a ruckus in the ward that evening when she adamantly refused surgery. The senior Professor had to rush in to pacify the mortified patient. Anyway, everything went on well and she cruised to recovery.
A recurring theme in my favourite TV show of the 90s, X-Files, was to find the 'Truth'. The 'Truth' always remained elusive and Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully spent their whole sane life trying in vain to discover it. They were repeatedly told that they cannot handle the 'Truth'.
Many questions only open the door to more questions. So are we just going to take everything that is given to us? If we had not seek out, we would still thinking that we are the universe and everything revolves around us. Well, many amongst us still do!

Thursday, 12 April 2012

Who decides what?

Reason for their predicament?
Who decided that Nicol David should be a world class squash star and not, say a chess master? Is it the parents' strict drilling and tireless pestering which Nicol took willingly at her stride that helped? Is it the neighbourhood that she grew in? Is it that an unexplained power from above that gave her and her parents this vision? Did a wise man who appeared from nowhere who suggested to them this path to follow? Did she or people around her realise that she had this special talent that made her where she is today? Is it the alignment of stars at her time of birth, if so I am sure there must be someone born exactly at the same time as she was but has not held a racquet in her life? Who gives the inner strength for an individual to excel in something whilst someone else with almost the DNA make-up fails miserably. Who decides that the adequately prepared marathon runner should have a bust up midway through his race? Is it karma?
If so who decides who is born with a heart defect, with congenital blindness or congenital syphilis for which the child suffers for no fault of theirs? Is God so cruel that He should decree that they were born to suffer? Is there really a pot of gold waiting for them at the end of their life (or afterlife)? If it is really a punishment, how come the body has no recollection of their sins so that they can regret and repent? How is the soul going to 'feel' the wrath of the Creator for disobedience of Law of Nature or Code of Law?
These are the unanswered questions that boggle a mind of a half centurion as he slips into his second and final half of time on earth. The questions keep on piling up and accumulates as the body slowly immerses itself into the loss of inhibitory effect of C2H5OH. 
Transcendental meditation promises to offer some of these answers but so far I have not heard of any explanation that explains my quandary. Maybe my nimble mind is too shallow!

“Be afraid. Be very afraid.”*