Imagine

I woke up early this morning and the eerie illuminated dial of my digital watch told me it was 4:18am. Try as I could, I was unable to go back to sleep. I stared like an owl into the darkness outside my bedroom window and soon heard the distant call for "Aazaan" at a nearby mosque. My immediate reaction was a flood of thoughts on the tense and precarious situation in the middle-east, with governments being overthrown and the global economic climate bracing for another salvo of fiscal mayhem.

I went back a few decades in time and remembered the Iran revolution and the rise of Khomeini. I was at St Xaviers College then and my very best friend Haji Ghulam Reza (I was impressed that he shared the same last name as the over-thrown Shah of iran) was concerned for his friends and family back in Tehran. My nostalgia of our puerile antics in college and the blatant flirting episodes, was interrupted by the soft-footed trot of Dojo' paws as he came over for a snuggle. I hugged him with relief realizing that there are but a few things in life that are immutable; and one of them is the love exuded by a pet, especially a dog, like our adorable Daschund.

My alarm went off and I rose quickly to set the coffee maker for my very own concoction of "Cafe Mocha". I felt the caffeine kick in and kick out the last vestige of sleep-deficit-filled fatigue. It is amazing how someone stumbled upon coffee and beer, two ambrosias that are part of a large spectrum of cannabinoids. I pulled on my running shoes and went out to meet up with a rather small group that was turning up for our weekend run. These are runs that provide spice and solace to an otherwise stressful and bland existence.

The run itself was very refreshing and it was one of those days when I finished feeling "comfortably tired" as Arthur Lydiard puts it in his training manual. However, for good measure and since I had a half hour in hand I went off on my own to skirt a loop around a dried up pond. It was on this brief sojourn that I remembered John Lennon and how utopian his dream was, when he put together the words of "Imagine";

Imagine there's no countries,
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You...you may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You...you may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one