Vein in Vanity

I was still in high school when my sister had her first baby. As cliché as it sounds I was over the moon. Consequently I played mother very enthusiastically and believed I was doing much better than her biological mother. Ergo the idea that I was great with kids took root. Now about 20 years later, it turns out I was right. I am great with kids. Just not with my own kids.     Your children are essentially you. My children are a smaller but truer version of me. And no I am not proud. When I see my daughter handling a tense situation the way I would (which is lose my mind and wring my hands) I do exactly that - lose my mind and wring my hands. Because why would I want her to inherit the “bad traits”? As parents aren’t we trying to raise children who are well rounded and happy? (Read don’t mess up as much as we did.) But children learn essentially through imitation. What they see they reproduce till they are grown enough to have an opinion of their own.  Now th...

Know how all of us are selfish but try our best to prove otherwise? How we grimace every time the "menacing" emotion is displayed (by someone else of course) or even discussed. I don't know how to say this without sounding like a total prick. But here it is anyway. We are all selfish and will continue to be unless we transmute to something else. Why? Because man is made that way and so it’s OK to be that way. It is only normal to look out for yourself.   Let me explain. Remember that time when you were newly married and trying to wrap your head around the fact that, well, that you were MARRIED? or When you got your first job and felt like you were a misfit and will never make it? or That time when you were trying hard to keep your new born alive?  And then do you remember that person (you thought was from a parallel universe) complain and whine about how you aren't keeping in touch, how you have become anti social, how you just don't care and how you are ...

For sometime now I have been wondering what marks excellence from mediocrity. Some people can make magic out of nothing. Can it be perseverance? The will to accomplish? To prove a point? Or is it passion. One of the most underrated and overused word there ever was! I am sure all of us heard and heard some more about the requisites to excel- in a job, in a relationship, in raising your child, while pursuing a hobby, while reading the newspaper and even while polishing your shoes. And passion tops the list. So i looked up the meaning of the word and it  said any powerful or compelling feeling or emotion.  Of many things that we do, some we do out of compulsion and some others out of interest. We clearly enjoy the latter and wouldn't mind going all out. So we work hard, are strong willed and consequently hit a level of satisfaction. Now when this interest is taken a few levels higher it becomes passion. And what was decent becomes prodigious. So the “big P” is at the root...