Gibran

Nehaa gifted Kahlil Gibran's Madman.
After reading it, realised how much I have grown and how much I appreciate it now...
The book is almost like a mouthpiece. A beautiful one.

I am going to shamelessly quote...to fulfill my pleasure to share and my pain, if I didn't

Nehaa and I kept reading, discussing and interpreting. Both interpreted differently and found the other's interpretation enormously interesting...
We also discovered intersections. Will share that too.

This was the first story we read:

The three ants:

Three ants met on the nose of a man who was lying asleep in the sun.
And after they had saluted one another, each according to the custom 
of his tribe, they stood there conversing. The first one said, 
"These hills and plains are the most barren I have known. I have 
searched all day for a grain of some sort, and there is none to be 
found." Said the second ant, "I too have found nothing, though I have 
visited every nook and glade. This is, I believe, what my people call 
the soft, moving land where nothing grows." Then the third ant raised 
his head and said, "My friends, we are standing now on the nose of the 
Supreme Ant, the mighty and infinate Ant, whose body is so great that 
we cannot see it, whose shadow is so vast that we cannot trace it, 
whose voice is so loud that we cannot hear it; and He is omnipresent."  
When the third ant spoke thus the other ants looked at each other and 
laughed. At that moment the man moved and in his sleep raised his hand 
and scratched his nose, and the three ants were crushed.

Neha's interpretation:

This is how we interpret God. He is so complex, and multi-dimensional that, our perception and understanding of him is based on what we see of him.

Like blind men trying to understand an elephant; the one who touches the tail sees the elephant as a rope, the one who holds the ears calls it a fan..but none have the expertise, wisdom or the knowledge to see the big picture

She thought the end of the story was just incidental, like the beginning.

I am not open enough to accept incidentalness so easily and naturally and mayb that' s what triggered my explanation.

My interpretation:

We attach too much importance to little things...which in the larger picture of life are really insignificant..which consumes and blinds us from seeing the larger picture

Life is an illusion and we don't really pick our moments to die...our illusion of permanence of life, allows us the luxury of wasting time...(You know why old people pray to God...they dont have this illusion as strong as us), the luxury of not living it to the fullest everyday

When we discussed our interpretations, we realised a common source...Both our interpretations were about the lack of understanding of the bigger picture; our incapability to places things in a context and think of our small things as our big world

Will post more Gibran's...more and more beautiful ones...Read On!

P.S. This must have been my longest post, by far..couldnt resist keeping a record of this!!