Changing frames of reference...

Yesterday for dinner I went to my high school teacher's place who is visiting from India for a few weeks. Today I spent the entire day with some friends from high school. We talked about a lot of things from those old days of adolescence when the world seemed so much different than it does now. While returning from the train station after dropping my friends off, my car's gas indicator started flashing so I decided to take the internal road instead of the 'toll' road to get some gas. As always, the mind started wandering off into thoughts, and came to point of realization that is simple, commonly known and experienced, yet interesting enough to pen (type!) down.

Our vision of the world around us, our outlook towards day to day life, our awareness about ourself, everything changes so much with the changes in our frame of reference!!

Last year when I was in Ahmedabad, I had visited my high school. While walking from the main gate to the building, passing through the hallways, entering the classroom, peeping out of the classroom window, looking over the compound wall towards the playground with the volleyball court was and is there, the open area right in the middle of the building where we spent numerous recesses playing cricket with the palm as bat and rolled up paper covered with a bunch of rubber bands as ball, all these places, all these passage ways, all the aisles between the benches (and the benches themselves), they all seemed so......small. What has changed....nothing except my frame of reference!

In the last few weeks I must have spent about $300 eating out. I remember the days when spending $1.69 for a lunch seemed so difficult. I remember the days when I used to take the same local road that I took today out of compulsion, to save $1.85 in tolls. I remember the days when even with those limitations there was a sense of contention, a peace of mind, a satisfaction with the self that ran deep down. What has changed....nothing except my own frame of reference!

I wonder if it were possible to freeze the frame of reference, or make oneself immune to the changes in this frame of reference, or reach a frame of reference where the frame of reference does not exist at all and we can always think in absolutes....I wonder how that state of mind would be....can we call it ataraxism :-)