A Tragedy or A Blessing

I read this little story 'A Tragedy or A Blessing' a few days ago, and I would like to share it with you today. The story is from the book by Glenn Van Ekeren - 'Words for All Occasions, Quotes, Stories, Anecdotes, Poems, Fables, Proverbs and One-Liners'.

'Years ago in Scotland, the Clark family had a dream. Clark and his wife worked and saved, making plans for their nine children and themselves to travel to the United States. It had taken years, but they had finally saved enough money and had gotten passports and reservations for the whole family on a new liner to the United States.

The entire family was filled with anticipation and excitement about their new life. However, seven days before their departure, the youngest son was bitten by a dog. The doctor sewed up the boy but hung a yellow sheet on the Clarks' front door. Because of the possibility of rabies, they were being quarantined for fourteen days.

The family's dreams were dashed. They would not be able to make the trip to America as they planned. The father, filled with disappointment and anger, stomped to the dock to watch the ship leave - without the Clark family. The father shed tears of disappointment and cursed both his son and God for their misfortune.

Five days later, the tragic news spread throughout Scotland - the mighty Titanic had sunk. The unsinkable ship had sunk, taking hundreds of lives with it. The Clark family was to have been on that ship, but because the son had been bitten by a dog, they were left behind in Scotland.

When Mr. Clark heard the news, he hugged his son and thanked him for saving the family. He thanked God for saving their lives and turning what he had felt was a tragedy into a blessing.'

I hope you enjoyed this story as much as I did. This brings me back many years ago when I entered first year of university. First year was a total disaster. Not to go into too much details, I had to change my educational path. There was not much of a change, but on the end I ended up taking slightly different courses than I anticipated on the first place. I was disappointed that I lost some time, but you know if my path was not altered, I would never met my loving husband - yes I met my husband in school that very next year and we both ended up graduating from the same profession, and got married. My story may not be that tragic, but still who knows what would happen if I did well and continue my education as I anticipated - however, I don't what to know, I am happy with the final result. Our paths in life get altered for reason, I believe; and unfortunately altered paths seems bad at times, but if it wasn't altered, then sometimes we find that things could have been worst, and sometimes we will never know.

Look Around You

Look around you and tell me what you can see. Just take this one minute and observe. Here are my observations, I see my laptop front of me, typing this post. I am surrounded by the office portable desk walls, sitting on the chair. There is phone beside me, and if I am ready to switch to another software on my screen, any second I will reach for the mouse. Around me, I also have cut outs from the magazines and clipped to the wall. Do you want to know what it is? I am going to tell you - there are three photo cut outs of the apples, green apples with one red in the middle. I liked this photo so much that I cut out three of them and surrounded myself with. I also have other two photo cut outs of the ostrich, one says FLEXIBLE SOLUTIONS. Now let me tell that this ostrich is bending forward and looking between its legs - quite flexible, but I don't see flexible solution - so I find it funny even if I know this is just a metaphor. The second one says BE AHEAD with ostrich running really fast that you cannot see what's on the background. Could he be going 100 miles per hour, possibly, may be not in real life, but with today's digital editing - definitely yes. And the last photo cut out is something about genetically altered fruit flies, I will not go into details, but the head line states Buzz Off! Don't worry it is nothing to do with people visiting me, I like when people visit my cubical and talk to me, but I found it kind of entertaining to have it on my wall. So what else I can tell you about my surroundings, not much just a standard office setting. So would you say pretty boring, but for me nothing is really boring once you have access to the Internet, or start thinking how all this started.

Now you may ask - what's the point of all this blobbing. Well I am confused. Why? Let me explain, I started to read this book by Bill Bryson A Short History of Nearly Everything. By the way, it is currently lying on my desk beside me and then when I go home it goes with me to bed. However, when at work, when I think about my projects, I find myself looking at it, not really thinking, just looking. To tell you the truth, I started to read this book a long time ago, and then I ended up reading something else. It was no point to continue now, so I started to read over again. Well I am only few pages into the book, and these pages revoked something that I recently started to question. How do we know this and that? What I mean is - when we talk about universe creation, star formations, evolution, birth, good food or bad food - how all this has happened or is happening - and believe or not we make things, we discover things. And then is us - intelligent human beings. The world of unknown, because all are just theories unless there is real data to support, even though author on the end has explanation for everything. Therefore, just enjoy the life and enjoy the beauty of nature, the beauty of life - ask questions, but don't expect the right answer, it is all too complicated to figure it out.

This post may be lame, and there may be not substance here - but look around you - all this stuff, ideas, theories - its amazing. Yes, I am lost in my thoughts, but the more I think about it, all is just too complicated to figure out, yet it works - lol now!