Adios 2017! Welcome 2018!

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Life is a long journey and each year is a milestone. So, we are almost past the milestone of 2017 and just about to hit the milestone of 2018. As we are ready to set foot into 2018, there are things I want to remember in 2018. I really want to mug up the list so I won’t keep forgetting and here goes the list:

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Give a little more credit to myself:
I have a problem of not giving myself credit enough for anything I ever do. To confess the problem is the first step towards fixing it. So yes, I have to agree that I need a little more of self worth and self appreciation. Whatever I do is always lesser for me than what someone else does (even if it's the very same thing or may be even actually lesser). So yes, I've got to change my scales. We all have seen that poster of a cat seeing itself as a lion in the mirror. My reasoning faculties have always contested that what good does it do to lose the sense of realism and seeing yourself as more than you actually are. But this year I make this conscious decision to be that very cat. After all, it is about believing that you are more than you appear to be; it is about believing in yourself. And come on, the world will not fall apart if I give myself a little more credit and a little more appreciation. If not me, who will?   

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Stop blasting and start pouring:
I have a problem that I have a lot of aggression in me and I don't even know where it comes from. I have fire inside of me. It’s a tendency I have no control over. I get hysteric sometimes when things do not seem to be working and I lose all the calm and poise. And even when I am not hyper or rude or aggressive, sometimes people mistake me for being so. Sigh! I need some voice modulation! Sometimes, my intentions are like so benign but my tone of voice will not leave its headiness. I feel so envious of people who can make the bitter lashes sound like honey laces. I am just the opposite. I can make the pleasantries sound like harsh and corrosive. So this is what I have to work on. And this is one hell of a job for me to stop blasting and start pouring.

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Knowing when to stop:
I am blind to fine lines. The fine line of respecting others's opinions and taking them as a sacrosanct gospel, the fine line of readjusting my priorities for someone and toppling the entire list upside down, the fine line of  the desire to maintain cordiality in relations and forgetting my own dignity in the desire to do so, the fine line of believing and foolhardy worshiping. I even forget the fine line of me being me and someone else being someone else. I mean I am not a magician who can fix things for people. I can try to help but I cannot heal on someone else's behalf for them. It’s not my job to work on someone else. My job is to work on myself. I have learnt and I am learning and I will keep mastering the lesson of knowing when to stop in the incoming year.

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Doing what I like and keeping it simple:
I have a hidden flare for making things sound more complicated than they really are. We all have heard of this I guess "log kya sochenge ye bhi tum hi sochoge to log kya sochenge?" And I am so one of those people who thinks on everyone's behalf. Why should I concern myself with all that burden of what he/she/they/you think about me or my life or my choices or my idiocies or my whatever? More than 90% of times we are not even a subject of people's thoughts while we are making ourselves the villains/clowns of their minds. And here people like me ask ourselves a hundred questions even before posting our thoughts online. So, the mantra has to change with the changing year. Keep it simple and do what I like to do.

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And lastly,

No Judging of my own-self and being kind to myself:
I cannot say it better than Marianne Williamson has said it already. And here is what she says,

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?'

Actually, who are you not to be? 

You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. 

It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we subconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

We should never let our skewed judgments stop us from doing what we want to do. And this is what I want to remember in the coming year. The quote by Marianne Williamson that I shared above was shared by a college senior (whom I never knew personally) on a bulk mail years back saved long in my inbox and here is the beauty of it all: I don't know how big or small the impact may be. But the words do make an impact. I don't know how many of the people in that bulk list read the mail, I don't know how many thought it through and I don't know how many drew inspiration from it. But here I am who still remembers this quote and finds it a beautiful piece of inspiration. So, if I am not getting a lot many likes/comments/reposts on my written word, it doesn't matter. What matters is may be someone out there has drawn some inspiration from my words, and even if it is just one, it counts as the real impact. And this holds true not only for words but for every other material and immaterial contribution as well. 

So, the coming year shall be about less judgment and more kindness.

*Self-Love*

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Lately I was watching the movie Diana inspired from the life of Lady Diana. There’s a dialogue in the movie I instantly fell in love with. It was when Diana suffers a break-up with Dr. Hazrat Khan (A Pakistani Heart Surgeon) after trying her all to make it work. She lets herself be wallowed in misery and sorrow until she collects herself back and makes a decision to go on a trip with Dodi. It is at this point her confidant Sonia asks her if she is fine and if she is not making this decision out of her loneliness. The response of Diana is what struck a chord with me instantly. She says, “I don’t feel the need to be caught anymore; because, I am not falling anymore. I am flying..”

It must not be without a reason that love is always fallen into! A free fall with a faith that our beloved will catch us.

And when that beloved fails to catch us? …                                              

Well…It leads to heartache, pain, sorrow and misery…Does it not?

Would it not be amazing if we could love ourselves so much that we would be capable of flying?...So if no one is there to catch us in our fall, we’ll simply fly in the parachute of self-love…

So much we have been programmed to keep searching for love outside, we have actually forgotten to look within and nurture the self love which is the source of any other love.

I loved the way a strong idea is entangled in the subtlety of this simple thought. “I don’t feel the need to be caught anymore; because, I am not falling anymore. I am flying…”

May all of us fly in self-love! <3

*Love and Gratitude*

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Lately, i am in the process of developing the habit of saying thank you for all the tiny little joys of life that so often are taken so for granted. The morning sun, the chirping birds, the water to drink, the food to eat, the house to live, the friends to cherish, the family for support, the new hope for new day, the smiles, the laughter and even the tears to make me strong.

Every single thing deserves my gratitude, my love. And this is why i have decided to be say thank you each day to remind myself what a beautiful life i have been blessed with. 

We are always running a race in our heads, never living fully in the moment, rushing back and forth meddling in the thoughts of past or future; and this thoughtless running makes us thankless for the simplest things we are blessed with.

If tomorrow there is an earthquake or a flood or a draught or any kind of natural calamity; and we are stuck in the middle of it with a ruined house, no food to eat, no water to drink and no loved ones left in the world, what shall we do then? Shall we be able to fight the nature to give us our all back? 

Such is the magnitude of our blessings; but we fail to count them since we never got a minute to spare and thank the universe, the nature and the source. We take the little things and tiny joys so for granted like we are entitled to those. I am walking on the road and I see a crippled person walking on the road and a thought crosses my mind that i am thankful for a perfect health and working limbs. But am i entitled?  No, none of us is entitled. We are all blessed.

This is what i want to remember for the rest of my life that i am blessed. Whatever turn my life takes, i have immense number of blessings to count and be thankful for.

And here, i want to take this opportunity to thank my blog and all the people i have come across here. Thanks to everyone who ever landed here, thanks to everyone who shared their valuable comments and encouraging words. Thanks for being a blessing. I love you all.

Why I think I need Meditation lately

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Shh....... That is what i need at the moment. Silence. Freedom from noise. Freedom not from the external noise, but freedom from the internal noise. Freedom from the perennial noise that exists within me. The noise of ego, expectations, fear and disappointments. The noise which keeps playing and replaying the loud egotistical and fear driven conversations in my head. The noise that skews my sense of self and that of the world around me.

And isn't it paradoxical that whenever we are feeling down, we are told to party, hang-out, go shopping, get a make-over and blah blah blah... Resorting to the external noise to get rid of the internal noise. While these can be the temporary solutions but can't lead to the permanent blissful state of freedom from internal noise.

Distractions come easy. So, everyone buys the distractions of external noise to silence the voice within. Distractions lead us to a state of limbo. But Meditation will bring the answers.

In a sunkissed world, I live

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In a sunkissed world, I live;

In nature is abundant joy,

Then why I am in misery,

Mired in what earthly ploy;

In a sunkissed world, I live;

The sky is ever so blue,

The Sun shines light years away,

Still, its warmth never fails you;

A bird revels in its flight,

It circles around,

Swings in the air,

As if in a merry-go-round;

The trees are so green,

Budding flowers shower love,

On butterflies which teem;

The song of a bird,

The dance of a humming bee,

It’s all too priceless,

And yet comes for free;

In a sunkissed world, I live;

In nature is abundant joy,

Then why I am in misery,

Mired in what earthly ploy;

I wonder if I lived in a world;

Where I paid

for the air I breathed,

And competed

for the sunlight I bequeathed;

Where the nature’s silence

Was replaced by a cacophony,

And for few moments of quiet,

I needed fortunes of money;

where the air was always still,

And for a few drops of rain,

I had to pay huge bill;

I wonder if I lived in such world;

But Thanks to the heavens,

In a sunkissed world, I live;

In nature is abundant joy,

Then why I am in misery,

Mired in what earthly ploy;

In a sunkissed world, I live;

The sky is ever so blue,

There is romance,

In colorful petals and their hues;

It’s all too priceless,

And yet comes for free.

In a sunkissed world, I live.

*......*

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Sometimes the only way out of pain is through the pain.

Sometimes the only way to let go is to embrace the pain and immerse in it before you are set free. 

A word with myself!

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Yesterday I just happened to observe a couple waiting in the queue right in front of me to buy the tickets. And all of a sudden, for no particular reason, I just got this thought.

“What exactly is marriage? To be with someone who wakes up by your side every day, who thinks he (or for that matter she too.. ) owns you to be able to enter you, but the moment that pact of right to each other’s body is violated,  will that relationship still survive and thrive?”

“Is not marriage just like one of the over-rated rituals?  Isn’t the need of marriage over hyped?”

That is to say,

I wonder if it is the marriage that is my need; or is it the confirmation and belonging to the widely accepted norms that is my need?

Is it the fear to stand out in the crowd for being different, fear of being looked down upon as some sort of pitiable object, and most of all fear of a life not validated by society at large?

Ofcourse, it is human nature to seek validation. The increasing no. of facebook posts, the plethora of tweets, the opinionated blogs; what is that one common thing that is at the bottom of it all? Isn’t it validation? There is hunger for validation. So, may be, one of us out here, doesn’t really has the need of a better-half to feel whole; maybe, one of us out here, does feel content and at peace just by being with ourselves; maybe, one of us out here, does not want to take up the responsibility of another life; maybe, one of us out here is capable of taking good care of one self; maybe, for one of us out here, the universal need of marriage is not universal afterall. But maybe, it’s just the fear of not getting validation that is holding that one of us person back, from sticking to his/her calling of life.

The only answer is perhaps that to live a life on one’s own terms and conditions, it requires a little more than courage. It requires fortitude, perseverance, and confidence on one’s own judgment. It requires the attitude of respecting others’ opinion and at the same time not getting affected too deeply by it.