What a day at the ZOO can do to you!!

Disclaimer: Before I start, I hereby declare that a lot of this may sound crazy to you, but thats just me!! And that's what my mind does to me!! No, don't pity me!! I love it!!
I'll keep it as funny as possible!!

So,

Sunny day + Saturday = Decision to go to the Zoo

Premal (My husband) was travelling to India, and so the entire responsibilty of entertaining the kids was on me!! Thankfully I love doing that!! It was a sunny day so we made up this bold decision to go to the zoo!! Not one of my all time favourite places but my boys love it... So yallah (means lets go in hebrew).... That day I found out that even my 6 year old son Aarush shared the same view as me!! "I don't like Zoo's" So he decided to stay at home with the nanny (and the Loom band). And my 3 year old and me set out!! 

Obviously I've changed a lot over the past 3 months (will tell you about that later. can't put two boring posts in one! ;-) And something told me that this trip was going to be different..! Hridhaan was super delighted to have the full attention from Mommy (no AARUSH plus no dad). All that elation shone on his face!! And surprisingly, I shared a similar feeling too!! Whose full attention did I have? I asked myself!! 

Waze helped us there, a lot of

loud singing and questions later we were there... They have a small safari before and Hridhaan enjoyed feeding the animals from the

car... Its so amazing to get so up close to the animals!! If you wait and watch you can actually feel their soul!! Those eyes seem to hold the truth of the entire 

universe!!

Zoo's always made me sad... seeing all the animals caged just so we couldn't go into the forest and see them! but this time when I entered the zoo, I got a feeling that the feeling of entrapment was mutual!! Just like all of us, having cages of personally determined limits, boundaries of believing that the forest is as big as the habitat the zoo gave to the animal! The food they get is the food they like... Our souls are trapped the same way in our bodies, and this so called world around us makes us believe in all that drama! We are the animals and the enlightened ones are looking upon us and pointing out (just like we point out at the gorilla) "OH Look!! Thats where we started" 

There were those few animals who showed moments of happiness when someone clapped for them or hooted at them, and those few who were there, present but understood their entrapment! I felt that. 

And that answered my question!! I had the full attention of my conscious today!!

Every comment, every interaction of love anger or disgust among those around me was blaring... and for the first time I was OK with it! I wasn't judging them, something made them behave that way and it was ok! I loved myself even more... and I wanted to go deeper into this newfound joy of intuition and acceptance.... and then bang, I was brought back to reality!! 

What happened was this: We had reached the elephants and Hridhaan was up on the fence that gave him a tiny foothold! I had just stepped back to take a picture of him with all the elephant in the background still concentrating on the swirl of thoughts in mind. Meanwhile he leaned forward and tripped over the fence! Luckily there was a thorny bush there to help him falling over!! (OKAY, you can call me a bad mother if you want!!)

The thorns pricked him and in all those frantic moments of consoling healing and hugging, the thoughts still didn't leave my mind! Two thoughts specifically in particular... 

One... 

Its not good to lean too much over into other peoples territory even if you are in total awe of them!!

Second....

FOCUS ON YOUR NOW.... SO many times just to think about our future we forget to focus on the now!! The "now" which is changing you with every breath, the "now" which is liberating you with every realisation, the "now" which is like the second child in the family.... always creating chaos and drama to call for your attention coz they actually don't get it! Lets change that statement on our bodily theatre that says "Now Showing" to "Now focusing"!!

Hridhaan is really strong, he didn't cry inspire of the thorns that hurt him. I looked for why he didn't cry, and so I asked him... He simply said, "Mamma it was my mistake!" He always understood that when you make mistakes, you do get hurt and there's no point crying about it. He knew he had many animals to look at before rang the warning bell with word "HOME"!! I wish we could do that.... understand that when we make mistakes we do get hurt... and not spend so much precious time in the after-effects. He went home and told Aarush they were tiger marks, just by the way!! BOYSS!! 

And so finally bribing my conscious with a future date... I was just enjoying the sheer pleasure of being with my son in the now! We were at the leopard! we had to get under this cave to look at it from the glass. it was solo close and it was taking circles around a bush!! obviously it wanted to run!! Probably they should put in a treadmill there.. i thought to myself..! Just then, this maybe 7 year old girl said that it seems like he's doing a ramp walk in the fashion show. WOW!! I said in total amazement of the comment. Would we adults ever think of this kind of connection? and if we would... would we be able to say it out loud...! I am soo sure that many of us would have had the wackiest comment and absurdest ideas... but how many of us put words into it? Leopard print is actually in fashion now!!

STOP!!!

I said to my mind that was knocking again. And we rushed to the penguins. Obviously there was no snow there, it was israel remember! But ya there was ICE CREAM nearby!! Wow... this name was so aptly put, because every kid (including me) screams (I Scream) when they see it "Mammaaaaa , ice creammmm!!!" Obviously we had to celebrate for such a wonderful time together!! 

SO we bought ice creams, each to our liking, and cheers-ed!! 

Cheers to mutual training between me and my son, 

and

cheers to self acceptance of each other, cheers to making mistakes, cheers to the NOW!!

Last but not the least, eeeyyyuuuuu that sounds so cliche....

One more boring thought, We had to rush to get this rented car trolley back within the hour otherwise we would be charged another 25! So we zoomed in full speed, saying excuse me N number of times, ughhhh, and we made it!! I asked that guy to click a picture of us. When I looked at it.... TAXI... 

It seemed just fitting!! 

We were touring in this symbolism of entrapment in a TAXI.... 

The hell pay the money and get offfff!!!! 

The meter is runnninggggg..... 

P.S: Pardon the grammatical errors, and picture quality... I tried to focus on them in the beginning... but focusing on my thoughts is my thing you see!!