Friday, November 10, 2006

everybody was once a stranger!

if you think about it, every person you know today was a stranger once! every person you know from the day you started becoming concious of yourself as different from the people around you, from the day you became aware of your own identity, was a stranger to begin with.

and this is true whether the person is your best friend, your spouse, your relative, your acquaintance, your colleague, your teacher, almost everybody you can think of.

even your parents were strangers as far as you are concerned till you became aware of them and accepted them as your parents. (how do you know they have not adopted you and raised you as their own child?)

the only people who do not start as strangers from your perspective are your own children. you know them from the moment they are born. you don't need to be introduced to them, you don't need to get to know them and start accepting them within your circle of 'known' people. they become part of your life from the moment they arrive. no, they become part of your life even before they are born!

your child is not a stranger to you as much as your reflection in the mirror is not a stranger to you!

do you agree, my friend-who-was-once-a-stranger?

2 comments:

Balaji said...

Good article, GP. One that makes us think.
We can also say that you won't be a stranger to someone whom you have known right from his/her birth. Such a person would usually be your child, especially in an urban nuclear family context. But it could also be someone else's child, may be your brother's or your friend's or even your grandchild.
Of course, this is assuming that a stranger is someone who already exists and you don't "know" him/her. If you, however, expand the definition slightly and define a stranger as just someone whom you don't know regardless of whether he/she existed before that, then those whom you know right from birth would be strangers initially. :-)

MG said...

Yes indeed. Its the circle of life...

MG