One Hundred and Seventy-three, Day 3

Today was Lecture Day. I sat through eight hours of lecture while my phone charged in a corner of the room. I took my milk over to a friend's home who has a powered fridge. I also picked up a couple sandalwood scented candles and lithium 123 batteries. I'm thankful I have a powerful flashlight that doesn't use C or D batteries and, having grown up Hindu, that I love the smell of sandalwood.
In 2004 I went for a week without power. They're saying the same again this time around. I'm ok with it although a little frustrated. Maybe it's karma. Saturday I played Warcraft with the Beatnik and had a good time and picked up useful loot and now I can't play. Of all the weeks to lose power, this one is the best since I have a midterm coming up. At least this time the weather is cooler than during the previous outage. Back then my housemates and I stayed at school ALL day and returned to sleep at night. In the mornings, we'd shower and head back to school. It was miserable. This one is much better!

One Hundred and Fourty-nine, A Step Back

I talked with Beatnik's mom today--it is her birthday--and we both mentioned how people can put in effort and in the end, you'll end up where you do and you work with that. It's an important lesson for kids to learn as they grow up. Many children (and adults for that matter), don't see anything beyond their own ideal pathway. This is handy in defining a goal or set of goals but if ever they fall off that path somewhere, everything comes to a screeching halt. Why? They just don't have experience with failing at something so they don't know how to react. People are tripping all the time (no LSD jokes please). It's hard to find a person who's never had to fall off her or his train tracks and have to redefine the pathway. That's an integral part of being a human being. Whether it's a big exam coming up or the health of an unborn baby, there are things in our control and things out of our control. Speaking from experience, I can control the amount of time I spend dedicated to studying for my exam. I cannot control most parts of my testing experience or what my score will be from that day. If I do well, I will be thankful and proceed onwards. If I don't do well and I pass, I'll be thankful for passing, and prepare to work harder down the road.

If I don't pass at all...well, let's just say there are other steps to be taken before I jump off my train tracks.

Fourty-seven, George O'Malley's Dad

It's knowing that you'll never see a person again. The Ultimate Goodbye. I think that Forever is impossible for a human being to really understand. We just put an arbitrarily chosen large number there in place of actual infinity. No communication is possible. Did people feel this back when an adventurous family member would depart and no word would ever come back? No idea whether the ship wrecked and all hands were lost halfway through its journey or whether the fellow traveled the world, gathered riches, and lived the high life in some far off fancy world? What would his parents have thought? His siblings and his friends? This person who has been part of the fabric of their lives, just ups and disappears.

I know I'm terribly lucky in some ways. One of them is that in my conscious memory, I have not had to deal with the passing of an immediate family member. I've always heard about so-and-so dying here or in India but never been emotionally vested in it. I've only had one person go who I felt strongly about; a crotchety old man who I came to love through my best friend. So I consider myself lucky. I complain about not having luck in everyday things but I don't really mind. Not when I know that I've had a lucky life when it comes to the important things.

Then again, maybe I did pay the price for the luck. Just in a vastly different way than most others.

Karma will continues its march and I shall go with it.