My First Sky Dive

 At 13,000 Ft, McDonald's Chicken Burger was the only thing I could think about. Because I was pretty sure that this was going to be my last day on planet earth. In order to overcome my fear of heights, the ultimate solution I could come up with was Sky Diving. Jesus! What was I thinking?

 My heart was about to break my rib cage and pop out. I could feel the immense adrenaline rush in my body. My veins were about to explode. Time had stopped completely. I could see, hear and feel everything clearly. I looked to my right and I could see the wicked smile on my instructors face. He looked like the grim reaper in a sky diver’s suit. My body was ripping the air apart and approaching the ground at a speed of Million Miles/Hr. Gravity never felt so merciless before. My mouth was filled with air and my teeth were about to be blown away. Irrespective of all this, for the first time in my life, I was in the moment; completely. The many emotions and states of consciousness that I experienced in those exhilarating 80 seconds, I had never experienced those in my entire life of 20 years. Don’t get too excited because by the time I realized that, I had hit 3,000 Ft. It was about time to open my parachute.

 I reached for the handle with my right hand and pulled it with every ounce of energy I had left in my body. The parachute was set free from captivity. At first the parachute chickened out. It was reluctant to spread its wings. I had to force it to open up by literally shaking my entire body in mid-air. I did a little Chiggy Wiggy move that I had learnt in my salsa class. But anyways, the parachute did open and to my surprise, I survived. Voila !!!

 I learnt one of the most important lessons of life from this breathtaking experience, and that is, McDonald's Chicken Burger does taste good after a nice Sky Dive.

Freedom of Speech

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

- Anais Nin

According to me, freedom of speech is an illusion created by the government in order to exploit the masses. In the United States, there is no such thing as freedom of speech. We breed in a controlled environment; like rats in the cage. Throughout our lives we are taught that the first amendment guarantees freedom of speech; but what we don’t know is that this privilege/right applies only to certain situations. For example, we cannot use profanity on high school/college campuses; the search results on Google are filtered as per the government requirements. What this means is that, if I blog about a certain religion, Google will block my blog from its search results. In some cases, the government has the authority to take down an entire website.

I believe that freedom of speech, in whatever form it may be, is one of the most important elements of democracy. Every person has his/her opinion, which according to me should be respected and not just criticized bluntly. Instead of calling someone a nut or a moron, you should give a logical reason for why you think the other person is wrong. Hey, after all, even you have the so called right to freedom of speech; use it.