Striving towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

Once, I wandered through the garden of human connection with the innocent belief that relationships, like ancient mountains, would stand unshaken through the winds of time. In my youthful naïveté, I envisioned an eternal spring for the bonds I cherished—with my brother, whose presence seemed as faithful as Lakshmana was to Rama in the ancient epics; with cousins whose laughter I assumed would echo through decades; with my beloved, whose hand I thought would forever rest in mine.

The philosopher in me had not yet grasped the temporal nature of all earthly phenomena. I dreamed of journeys with my father—pilgrimages to the sacred grounds of cricket, from Lords to Melbourne, stretches of green that symbolized our shared passion. But fate, that unseen playwright, introduced an unexpected turn in our narrative when cancer appeared, a villain that swiftly took him from our story, leaving behind only the ink of memories on tear-stained pages.

My father once likened my brotherhood to that of divine siblings from ancient texts—a bond unbreakable, a loyalty unquestionable. For seasons uncounted, this appeared as truth. Yet now, in life's strange irony, I could stand before presidents and leaders but cannot cross the threshold into my brother's home.

Such is the mystery of human connection—its fluidity, its fragility. The wise soul comes to understand that relationships, like the seasons, have their cycles of bloom and dormancy. They are not eternal monuments but rather flowing rivers, changing course as they travel toward the sea of time.

To preserve one's inner peace, one must embrace this impermanence with the calm acceptance of a stoic. By acknowledging the finite nature of all earthly bonds, we learn to hold them neither too tightly nor too loosely—finding that middle path where we can love deeply while remaining unbroken by transformation or loss. In this philosophical stance lies the garden of equanimity, where we can cherish what is while accepting what must be