Who are you?

There is this large hall with many distinguished folks - Saurav the hero, Saurav the magnificient, Saurav the spiderman (?), and countless others. Their talk and show is interrupted by a small squeak from a corner of the hall. The heads turn to an insignificant corner where Saurav the no-one stammers out - Who are you?

That is when I woke up

God loves mankind

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

- Psalm 8:3-4

One step at a time

Living Right

I have talked elsewhere on Living Life, and Living Right. The following quotes from the 1946 book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

"The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not."

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom."

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

My favorite quote from the movie - A Beautiful Mind

I've made the most important discovery of my career... the most important discovery of my life. It's only in the mysterious equation of love that any logical reasons can be found. I'm only here tonight because of you. You're the only reason I am... You are all my reasons.
- Russell Crowe as John Nash, in the movie A Beautiful Mind.

On love by Viktor Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning (1946) is a book by Viktor E. Frankl which chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate.
The following is one quote from this book

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way — an honorable way — in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."

Pain, Conflict and Death

From the movie, "Shortcut to Happiness"

Daniel Webster (Anthony Hopkins):

"Yes, God could have created any reality he wanted.
But he created this one.
Birth, pain, conflict, and death.
Pain reminds us of all that which hurts us.
Conflict challenges us to be better than we think we are.
And death? Well, death.
Death gives us the chance to sum up all the good we've done
or left undone in life.
Yeah, It is a painful world."

On miracles

Quote from the movie 'Bruce Almighty'

God :

Parting a soup is not a miracle, Bruce. It's a magic trick. A single mom who's working two jobs, and still finds time to take her son to soccer practice, that's a miracle. A teenager who says no to drugs and yes to an education, that's a miracle. People want me to do everything for them. What they don't realize is *they* have the power. You want to see a miracle, son? Be the miracle.

For other quotes from the movie see this page on wikiquote.

Happiness and Success

"Don't aim at success--the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run--in the long run, I say--success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it." - Viktor E. Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning