The benchmark life

My best friend at school accompanied me home to find out what language I speak at home. He was wondering despite all his efforts he could not score better than me in one subject of language i.e English. I could never explain how I scored better and to an extent I enjoyed his discomfort.Only in the last competitive exam he scored better and that laid to rest all his doubts over my supremacy in the subject and our friendship flourished. As for me I blamed my poor scores on the previous night matinee show which was more important than the exam and in return it saved my friendship.
However this was not the first time I was bench-marked. I did not realize at school that I enjoyed being a leader ( now I don't..reasons to be explained later) but in the interest of studies when my mom asked me to stay off the elections for the school captain I stepped back reluctantly. However I campaigned for my friend who seemed to be a much better leader than me. But just like elections everywhere the best don't come first and this risk was picked up by our school principal much before the elections. So he had to chose a better loser against whom my friend could win convincingly. And they could not find anyone better than me as a last minute replacement for the guy who could defeat my friend easily in the elections.
From then on I always feared I could be become a benchmark for all the wrong reasons and I dreaded being a wrong example for many to follow, so never chose to tell my silly stories to everyone, lest they spread and chose me to be the benchmark.
This made me think how do people arrive at the benchmark. It is someone who is probably a notch (with a minuscule difference) above average, but not the best, can be easily replaced with another benchmark. At the same time the benchmark could be better than the average Joe atleast for some period of time. The kind who seem to have the potential just enough to make the mark and yet stay as a surpassable benchmark.
Last time I was being set as a benchmark by some over enthusiastic parent to convince their young son to pursue an engineering degree who exposed my fallibility that I could not even buy a house after working for 10 years. Unless you are a fallible benchmark there is no hope for the one who want to cross over, otherwise you graduate into an exception and then get less talked about.
Although being a benchmark does not mean you will be spared comparison with other benchmarks, its just that you know how the rest feel when you are the benchmark itself. At work it is no different when you or your teams get slotted as benchmarks. This results in losing a chance to tread the untried or untested path where you could stumble on a better model of doing things or atleast enjoy the diversity instead of benchmarking people

Coping in uncertain times

Today my baby kissed me for the first time when I opened my eyes after evening prayers. All this while I was thinking I did not deserve it (still I think I did not deserve) and may be I deserve being punished as I liked my mom more than my dad. Or maybe even my laziness prevented me from helping my wife with all the baby chores I was asked to do.
Not that I'm going to change or I want to change, but something inside me is choking my thought process, may be it is my mother's ill health or my work. By now it was high  time I should have got used to both - the absolute uncertainty within my area of work and absolutely certainty of the helplessness we get to see in Parkinsons. I did not even hope for a miracle even though I believe faith could move mountains. It would have been good if the disease did not have a name or better if modern science could come up with a cure in my mother's lifetime to benefit out of it or I would curse my misfortune that the cure could come up a tad earlier.
Melissa started walking when she is a little more than 13 months and probably 7 days old with 5-6 baby steps and next day I heard my brother buying a wheel chair for my mother. How I wished my mother could be hale and hearty like the old people I see around in Dublin, independent and bubbling with enthusiasm. It was not to be, I had to live with this helplessness. History would repeat itself, my mom would have nightmares about her mom and I was going to inherit the same legacy. Only the awareness that life is so futile at times has been probably been imbibed better as the days go by.
Often we hear we live in uncertain times but then death is supposed to be uncertain or is life being uncertain is preparing us for the uncertainty we might face in death. But then how does it work for those who are aware as to when and how they will die, is life more certain for them or for those who chose to take their own lives at a uncertain moment and if lucky enough to survive, are certain that life is still worth living despite the uncertainties as there is a hope that uncertainty would not stay certain all the time. Reading the above makes me think I was better off without writing or may be I'm just cleansing myself of my useless and aimless thought process.
I could only summarize I miss my mom already (when she is alive and does remember me so well) from the old times when she asked me to accompany her one more time to the market and I did not. If only I could get her favorite food, favorite saree or anything she liked one more time. Probably more than me if she could realize and enjoy every moment when she was well that life is so beautiful despite all the uncertainties. May be it was the times my mother lived in, the challenges she had to face, the stress or some reaction from the medicines we will never know.
The time we have at hand could be savoured and time we lost could only be cherished without regret if possible and the time that is to come we pray for strength to understand and perhaps even marvel at God's will.